1.
Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
2.
Baroque music
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Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed the Renaissance music era, and was followed in turn by the Classical era, Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key, during the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite, while the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed for listening, not for accompanying dancers. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate ornamentation, made changes in musical notation. Many musical terms and concepts from this era, such as toccata, fugue, dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously, was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works. The word baroque comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pearl, the term Baroque is generally used by music historians to describe a broad range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed over a period of approximately 150 years. The systematic application by historians of the baroque to music of this period is a relatively recent development. In 1919, Curt Sachs became the first to apply the five characteristics of Heinrich Wölfflins theory of the Baroque systematically to music, all of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term acquired currency only in the 1940s, in the writings of Bukofzer, nevertheless, the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music. It may be helpful to distinguish the Baroque from both the preceding and following periods of musical history, the Baroque period is divided into three major phases, early, middle, and late. Although they overlap in time, they are dated from 1580 to 1630, from 1630 to 1680. In reference to music, they based their ideals on a perception of Classical musical drama that valued discourse, the early realizations of these ideas, including Jacopo Peris Dafne and LEuridice, marked the beginning of opera, which were a catalyst for Baroque music. Concerning music theory, the widespread use of figured bass represents the developing importance of harmony as the linear underpinnings of polyphony. Harmony is the end result of counterpoint, and figured bass is a representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance. With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that was read by keyboard instrument players such as players or pipe organists. The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to the player what intervals she should play above each bass note. The keyboard player would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note and this led to the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense of closure at the end of a piece—one of the fundamental ideas that became known as tonality
3.
Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV 226
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Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, BWV226, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in Leipzig in 1729 for the funeral of Johann Heinrich Ernesti. For Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, the score survives. Bach himself noted on its title, J. J. Motetta à doi Cori bey Beerdigung des seel, prof. und Rectoris Ernesti di J. S. Bach. Ernesti was professor of poetry at Leipzig University and director of the Thomasschule, scholars debate if the date of the first performance, was 24 October, or rather 21 October, as indicated by the title page of the sermon. The text is taken from the Epistle to the Romans and Martin Luthers third stanza to the hymn Komm, Heiliger Geist, Ernesti himself had chosen the text from the epistle for the funeral sermon. The motet is structured in three movements and scored for two four-part choirs and they sing together in movements 2 and 3. The orchestral parts are extant, indicating that choir I was doubled by strings, for the basso continuo, separate violone and organ parts are provided. Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf Der aber die Herzen forschet Du heilige Brunst, süßer Trost Bach composed the text according to its meaning, the opening contrasts two choirs in imitation. In lively 3/8 time, the word Geist is illustrated by a lively melismatic figure, the sighs are audible in the broken melodic lines of all voices. The thought Der aber die Herzen forschet appears as a fugue in four parts in stile antico. Here the word Heiligen is illustrated in extended melismatic writing, the closing Pentecostal chorale is set for four parts. Johann Sebastian Bach / Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf klassika. info Free MP3 recording of Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf – BWV226 from Umeå Akademiska Kör
4.
Melisma
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Melisma is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, Music of ancient cultures used melismatic techniques to induce a hypnotic trance in the listener, useful for early mystical initiation rites and religious worship. This quality is found most famously in Arabic music where the scale is said to consist of quarter tones. Orthodox Christian chanting also bears a resemblance to this. Middle Eastern melismatic music was developed further in the Torah chanting and it then appeared in some genres of Gregorian chant, where it was used in certain sections of the Mass, with the earliest written appearance around AD900. The gradual and the alleluia, in particular, were characteristically melismatic, for example, while the tract is not, the Byzantine Rite also used melismatic elements in its music, which developed roughly concurrently with the Gregorian chant. In Western music, the term melisma most commonly refers to Gregorian chant However, within Jewish liturgical tradition, melisma is still commonly used in the chanting of Torah, readings from the Prophets, and in the body of a service. For an examination of the evolution of this tradition, see Idelsohn, today, melisma is commonly used in Middle Eastern, African, Balkan, and African American music, Fado, Flamenco, and various Asian folk and popular musical genres. Melisma is also featured in Western popular music. Early in their careers, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Melisma is used by countless pop artists such as Michael Jackson, although this form usually involves improvising melismas over a simpler melody. The use of melisma is a feature of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson. Use of melismatic vocals was slowly growing in the 1980s, although other artists used melisma before Houston, her rendition of Dolly Partons love song I Will Always Love You pushed the technique into the mainstream in the 90s. The trend in R&B singers is considered to have been popularized by Mariah Careys song Vision of Love, which was released and topped the charts at number one in 1990, and went on to be certified gold. Ding Dong Merrily on High, arranged by George Ratcliffe Woodward, contains an even longer melisma of 31 notes, George Frideric Handels Messiah contains numerous examples of melisma, as in the following excerpt from the chorus For Unto Us a Child Is Born. The soprano and alto lines engage in a 57-note melisma on the word born, play Melisma is also used, though rarely and briefly, in the music of Jethro Tull, examples include the eponymous track of the album Songs From the Wood and the song Skating Away. One of the most striking instances in recent pop music occurs in Bruce Springsteens The Ties that Bind, wolfgang Amadeus Mozart also uses melisma in his Requiem Mass in D minor in the Kyrie sequence, with the e in eleison being elaborately sung in various notes. Arabic maqam American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language entry on melisma Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary entry on melisma
5.
Polyphony
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Within the context of the Western musical tradition, the term polyphony is usually used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Baroque forms such as fugue, which might be called polyphonic, are usually described instead as contrapuntal. In all cases the conception was probably what Margaret Bent calls dyadic counterpoint, with part being written generally against one other part. The term polyphony is also used more broadly, to describe any musical texture that is not monophonic. Such a perspective considers homophony as a sub-type of polyphony, traditional polyphony has a wide, if uneven, distribution among the peoples of the world. Most polyphonic regions of the world are in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and it is believed that the origins of polyphony in traditional music vastly predate the emergence of polyphony in European professional music. Currently there are two approaches to the problem of the origins of vocal polyphony, the Cultural Model. Although the exact origins of polyphony in the Western church traditions are unknown,900, are usually considered the oldest extant written examples of polyphony. These treatises provided examples of two-voice note-against-note embellishments of chants using parallel octaves, fifths, rather than being fixed works, they indicated ways of improvising polyphony during performance. 1000, is the oldest extant example of notated polyphony for chant performance, European polyphony rose out of melismatic organum, the earliest harmonization of the chant. Twelfth-century composers, such as Léonin and Pérotin developed the organum that was introduced centuries earlier, the lyrics of love poems might be sung above sacred texts in the form of a trope, or the sacred text might be placed within a familiar secular melody. The oldest surviving piece of music is the English rota Sumer is icumen in. These musical innovations appeared in a context of societal change. After the first millennium, European monks decided to start translating the works of Greek philosophers into the vernacular, Western Europeans were aware of Plato, Socrates, and Hippocrates during the Middle Ages. However they had largely lost touch with the content of their surviving works because the use of Greek as a language was restricted to the lands of the Eastern Roman Empire. Once these ancient works started being translated thus becoming accessible, the philosophies had a impact on the mind of Western Europe. This sparked a number of innovations in medicine, science, art, European polyphony rose prior to, and during the period of the Western Schism. Avignon, the seat of the antipopes, was a center of secular music-making
6.
Renaissance music
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Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the style of the Franco-Flemish school. The invention of the press in 1440 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and musical theory texts on a wider geographic scale. Prior to the invention of printing, songs and music that were written down and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. These musicians were sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier, opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as an attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Music was increasingly freed from constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression, composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa, popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists, Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Precursor versions of familiar modern instruments developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to responding to the evolution of musical ideas, Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works, an enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance. These can be heard on recordings made in the 20th and 21st century, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the reliance on the interval of the third. Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. The modal characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the use of root motions of fifths or fourths
7.
Johannes de Grocheio
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Johannes de Grocheio was a Parisian musical theorist of the early fourteenth century. His French name was Jean de Grouchy, but he is commonly known by his Latinized name. A Master of Arts, he is the author of the treatise Ars musicae, almost one-third of Grocheios treatise is devoted to liturgical and composed music. The rest is devoted to music, and Grocheio surveyed its new social importance in a systematic. Grocheio writes, for example, that a good fiddler generally performs every kind of cantus and cantilena, Grocheio was also one of the first scholars to define a motet. Narrative epics, Grocheio concluded, contributed to the stability of the city because they encouraged citizens of all ages, london, British Library, Harley 281, ff. Der Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheo nach den Quellen neu herausgegeben mit Übersetzung ins Deutsche und Revisionsbericht, media latinitas musica 2, Gebrüder Reinecke, Leipzig 1943, p. 41-67. Colorado Springs College Music Press, translations, Colorado Springs 1973, Johannes de Grocheio on secular music, a corrected text and a new translation. ”Plainsong and Medieval Music 2, no. Constant J. Mews, John N. Crossley, Catherine Jeffreys, Leigh McKinnon, kalamazoo, MI, Medieval Institute Publications,2011. ^ Christopher Page, Listening to the trouvères, Early Music, Vol.25, No
8.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
9.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
10.
Strophic
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Strophic form is the term applied to songs in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. The opposite of strophic form, with new music written for every stanza, is called through-composed, the term is derived from the Greek word στροφή, strophē, meaning turn. It is the simplest and most durable of musical forms, extending a piece of music by repetition of a formal section. This may be analyzed as A A A, a modified strophic form varies the pattern in some stanzas somewhat like a rudimentary theme and variations. Contrasting verse-chorus form is a form that alternates between two sections of music, although this may also be interpreted as constituting a larger strophic verse-refrain form. Many folk and popular songs are strophic in form, including the twelve bar blues, ballads, hymns, examples include Barbara Allen, Erie Canal, and Michael Row the Boat Ashore. Many classical art songs are composed in strophic form, from the 17th century French air de cour to 19th century German lieder. Haydn used the variation form in many of his string quartets. Franz Schubert composed many important strophic lieder, including settings of both poems and simpler, folk-like texts, such as his Heidenröslein and Der Fischer. Several of the songs in his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin use strophic form, online Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Popularmusikforschung/German Society for Popular Music Studies e. V. Ed. by Ralf von Appen, André Doehring and Thomas Phleps
11.
Cantus firmus
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In music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition. The plural of this Latin term is cantus firmi, although the corrupt form canti firmi can also be found, the Italian is often used instead, canto fermo. The term first appears in theoretical writings early in the 13th century, the earliest polyphonic compositions almost always involved a cantus firmus, typically a Gregorian chant, although by convention the term is not applied to music written before the 14th century. Later, the cantus firmus appeared in the voice, singing notes of longer duration, around which more florid lines. Elaborations came later, in what was to be known as the paraphrase technique, the cyclic mass, which became the standard type of mass composition around the middle of the 15th century, used cantus firmus technique as its commonest organising principle. At first the cantus firmus was almost always drawn from plainchant, probably the most widely set of the secular cantus firmus melodies was Lhomme armé. Over 40 settings are known, including two by Josquin des Prez, and six by a composer or composers in Naples. Many composers of the middle and late Renaissance wrote at least one mass based on melody. German composers in the Baroque period in Germany, notably Bach, in the opening movement of Bachs St Matthew Passion, the chorale O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig appears in long notes, sung by a separate choir of boys in ripieno. Many of his chorale preludes include a chorale tune in the pedal part, using a cantus firmus as a means of teaching species counterpoint was the basis of Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux, although the method was first published by Girolamo Diruta in 1610. Counterpoint is still taught routinely using an adapted from Fux. Several writers have used cantus firmus as a metaphor, kate Gross used it for those childhood pursuits that give her happiness and define her - pursuits that she calls the enduring melody of her life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer also uses the metaphor for love for God in his Letters and Papers from Prison, M. Jennifer Bloxam, Cantus firmus, Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, Sparks, E. H. Cantus firmus in Mass and Motet, Berkeley
12.
Rhythmic mode
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In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations. The rhythmic modes of Notre Dame Polyphony were the first coherent system of notation developed in Western music since antiquity. Composition types which were permeated by the modal rhythm include Notre Dame organum, conductus, in most sources there were six rhythmic modes, as first explained in the anonymous treatise of about 1260, De mensurabili musica. The fourth mode is rarely encountered, an exception being the second clausula of Lux magna in MS Wolfenbüttel 677, the fifth mode normally occurs in groups of three and is used only in the lowest voice, whereas the sixth mode is most often found in an upper part. The reading and performance of the music notated using the rhythmic modes was thus based on context. After recognizing which of the six modes applied to a passage of neumes, in modern editions of medieval music, ligatures are represented by horizontal brackets over the notes contained within it. All the modes adhere to a principle of metre, meaning that each mode would have a number of beat subdivisions divisible by the number 3. Some medieval writers explained this as veneration for the perfection of the Holy Trinity, less speculatively, the flexibility of rhythm possible within the system allows for variety and avoids monotony. Notes could be broken down into units or two rhythmic units of the same mode could be combined into one. An alternative term used by Garlandia for both types of alteration was reduction and these were of two types, the plica and the climacus. The plica was adopted from the liquescent neumes of chant notation, and receives its name from its form which, in modal notation, however, the plica usually occurs as a vertical stroke added to the end of a ligature, making it a ligatura plicata. The plica usually indicates an added breve on a weak beat, the pitch indicated by the plica depends on the pitches of the note it is attached to and the note following it. If both notes are the same, then the tone is the upper or lower neighbor. If the interval between the notes is a third, then the plica tone fills it in as a passing tone. If the two notes are a second apart, or at an interval of a fourth or larger. The climacus is a descending scale figure, written as a single note or a ligature followed by a series of two or more descending lozenges. Anonymous IV called these currentes, probably in reference to the figures found in pre-modal Aquitanian and Parisian polyphony. Franco of Cologne called them coniunctura, the difficulty was compounded in the later half of the 13th century, when the lozenge shape came also to be used for the semibreve
13.
Conductus
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In medieval music, conductus is a type of sacred, but non-liturgical vocal composition for one or more voices. The word derives from Latin conducere, and the conductus was most likely sung while the lectionary was carried from its place of safekeeping to the place from which it was to be read. The conductus was one of the types of vocal composition of the ars antiqua period of medieval music history. The form most likely originated in the south of France around 1150, most of the conductus compositions of the large mid-13th-century manuscript collection from Notre Dame are for two or three voices. Much of the repertoire is contained in the Florence Manuscript. Conductus are also unique in the Notre Dame repertory in admitting secular melodies as source material, a significant and interesting repertory of conductus from late in the period consists of songs which criticize abuses by the clergy, including some which are quite outraged. While it might be difficult to them being sung in church. Almost all composers of conductus are anonymous, some of the poems, all of which are in Latin, are attributed to poets such as Philip the Chancellor and John of Howden. The style of the conductus was usually rhythmic, as befitting music accompanying a procession, Music theorists who wrote about the conductus include Franco of Cologne, who advocated having a beautiful melody in the tenor, Johannes de Garlandia, and Anonymous IV. The conductus lasted longest in Germany, where it was documented into the 14th century, english conductus of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries often use the technique of rondellus. Hyperion Conductus Project, John Potter, Southampton University The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ISBN 1-56159-174-2 Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music. ISBN 0-393-09090-6 Janet Knapp, Conductus, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy
14.
Homophony
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In music, homophony is a texture in which a primary part is supported by one or more additional strands that flesh out the harmony and often provide rhythmic contrast. This differentiation of roles contrasts with equal-voice polyphony and monophony, historically, homophony and its differentiated roles for parts emerged in tandem with tonality, which gave distinct harmonic functions to the soprano, bass and inner voices. A homophonic texture may be homorhythmic, which means all parts have the same rhythm. Chorale texture is another variant of homophony, initially, in Ancient Greece, homophony indicated music in which a single melody is performed by two or more voices in unison or octaves, i. e. monophony with multiple voices. Homophony as a term first appeared in English with Charles Burney in 1776, the choral arrangement of four voices has since become common in Western music. Homophony began by appearing in sacred music, replacing polyphony and monophony as the dominant form, however, some traditional devices, such as repeated chords, are still used. Jazz and other forms of popular music generally feature homophonic influences. Homophony has appeared in several cultures, perhaps particularly in regions where communal vocal music has been cultivated. When explorer Vasco da Gama landed in West Africa in 1497, singers normally harmonize voices in homophonic parallelism moving in parallel thirds or fourths. This type of model is also, implemented in instrumental music where voices are stacked in thirds or fourths. Homophonic Parallelism is not restricted to thirds and fourths, however all harmonic material adheres to the system the particular tune or song is based on. The use of harmony in sixths is common in areas where a scale system is used. For instance, the Fang people of Gabon use homophony in their music, in eastern Indonesia, two-part harmonies are common, usually in intervals of thirds, fourths or fifths. In melody-dominated homophony, accompanying voices provide chordal support for the lead voice, some popular music today might be considered melody-dominated homophony, voice typically taking on the lead role, while instruments like piano, guitar and bass guitar normally accompany the voice. Monody is similar to melody-dominated homophony in that one becomes the melody
15.
Counterpoint
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In music, counterpoint is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, the term originates from the Latin punctus contra punctum meaning point against point. Counterpoint generally involves musical lines with strongly independent identities, Counterpoint has been used to designate a voice or even an entire composition. In each era, contrapuntally organized music writing has been subject to rules—sometimes strict ones, chords are the simultaneous soundings of notes, whereas harmonic, vertical features are considered secondary and almost incidental when counterpoint is the predominant textural element. Counterpoint focuses on melodic interaction—only secondarily on the produced by that interaction. In the words of John Rahn, It is hard to write a beautiful song and it is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The way that is accomplished in detail is, some examples of related compositional techniques include, the round, the canon, and perhaps the most complex contrapuntal convention, the fugue. All of these are examples of imitative counterpoint, Species counterpoint generally offers less freedom to the composer than other types of counterpoint and therefore is called a strict counterpoint. The student gradually attains the ability to free counterpoint according to the given rules at the time. The idea is at least as old as 1532, when Giovanni Maria Lanfranco described a concept in his Scintille di musica. Zacconi, unlike later theorists, included a few extra contrapuntal techniques, a succession of later theorists quite closely imitated Fuxs seminal work, often with some small and idiosyncratic modifications in the rules. The following rules apply to melodic writing in each species, for each part, if the final is approached from below, then the leading tone must be raised in a minor key, but not in Phrygian or Hypophrygian mode. Thus, in the Dorian mode on D, a C♯ is necessary at the cadence, permitted melodic intervals are the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave, as well as the major and minor second, major and minor third, and ascending minor sixth. The ascending minor sixth must be followed by motion downwards. The three notes should be from the triad, if this is impossible, they should not outline more than one octave. In general, do not write more than two skips in the same direction, if writing a skip in one direction, it is best to proceed after the skip with motion in the other direction. The interval of a tritone in three notes should be avoided as is the interval of a seventh in three notes, there must be a climax or high point in the line countering the cantus firmus. This usually occurs somewhere in the middle of exercise and must occur on a strong beat, an outlining of a seventh is avoided within a single line moving in the same direction
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Medieval music
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Medieval music consists of songs and instrumental pieces from about 400 A. D. to 1400. Medieval music was an era of Western music, including music used for the church. Medieval music includes vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music, solely instrumental music. Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass, the Mass is a reenactment of Christs Last Supper, intended to provide a spiritual connection between man and God. Part of this connection was established through music and this era begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the era and the beginning of the Renaissance music era is difficult. The date range in this article is the one adopted by musicologists. S. Bach and Classical music period composers from the 1700s such as W. A. Mozart, the most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned by ear and this greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music made it easier to disseminate songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people. Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, the flute was made of wood in the medieval era] rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While modern orchestral flutes are made of metal and have complex key mechanisms and airtight pads. The recorder was made of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 2000s, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has holes on its front. One of the predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times. This instruments pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches, Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore, gittern, citole, the bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings, the hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings
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Secularity
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Secularity is the state of being separate from religion, or of not being exclusively allied with or against any particular religion. Historically, the secular was not related or linked to religion. The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the 18th century European Enlightenment, one can regard eating and bathing as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, some religious traditions see both eating and bathing as sacraments, therefore making them religious activities within those world views, saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious activities. The secular is experienced in diverse ways ranging from separation of religion and state to being anti-religion or even pro-religion, a related term, secularism, involves the principle that government institutions and their representatives should remain separate from religious institutions, their beliefs, and their dignitaries. Many businesses and corporations, and some operate on secular lines. This stands in contrast to theocracy, government with deity as its highest authority, Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saeculum which meant of a generation, belonging to an age or denoted a period of about one hundred years. In the ancient world, saeculum was not defined in contrast to any sacred concerns and had a usage in Latin. It was in Christian Latin of medieval times, that saeculum was used for distinguishing this temporal age of the world from the realm of God. The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones. This does not necessarily imply hostility to God or religion, though some use the term this way, routinization — institutionalizing through integration into the society. Differentiation — a redefined place such as when accepting its status as one religion in a plural religious field or morphing into a more generic, disengagement — the detachment of certain facets of social life from religion. Transformation — gradual change over time in a sense that Protestantism became for Christianity. Generalization — a particular kind of change in which it becomes less specific, more abstract, has moderation of controversial and divisive claims. Desacralization — culture and rationality guide people while leaving out religious beings, segmentation — the development of specialized religious institutions, which take their place beside other specialized social institutions. Secularism — the only form that leads to rejection of religion. Examples of secular used in this way include, Secular authority, which involves legal, police, and military authority, as distinct from clerical authority, or matters under church control. Secular clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, who, traditionally, do not live the lives of the regular clergy and are therefore, in a sense
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Vernacular
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Some linguists use vernacular and nonstandard dialect as synonyms. The use of vernacular is not recent, here vernacular, mother language and dialect are already in use in a modern sense. The figurative meaning was broadened from the diminutive extended words vernaculus, varro, the classical Latin grammarian, used the term vocabula vernacula, termes de la langue nationale or vocabulary of the national language as opposed to foreign words. In general linguistics, a vernacular is contrasted with a lingua franca, for instance, in Western Europe until the 17th century, most scholarly works had been written in Latin, which was serving as a lingua franca. Works written in Romance languages are said to be in the vernacular, the Divina Commedia, the Cantar de Mio Cid, and The Song of Roland are examples of early vernacular literature in Italian, Spanish, and French, respectively. In Europe, Latin was used instead of vernacular languages in varying forms until c. 1701, in its latter stage as New Latin, in Catholicism, vernacular bibles were later provided, but Latin was used at Tridentine Mass until the Second Vatican Council of 1965. Certain groups, notably Traditionalist Catholics, continue to practice Latin Mass, in India, the 12th century Bhakti movement led to the translation of Sanskrit texts to the vernacular. In science, a user of the vernacular was Galileo. 1600, though some of his works remained in Latin, a later example is Isaac Newton, whose 1687 Principia was in Latin, but whose 1704 Opticks was in English. Latin continues to be used in fields of science, notably binomial nomenclature in biology, while other fields such as mathematics use vernacular. In diplomacy, French displaced Latin in Europe in the 1710s, certain languages have both a classical form and various vernacular forms, with two widely used examples being Arabic and Chinese, see Varieties of Arabic and Chinese language. In the 1920s, due to the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese was replaced by written vernacular Chinese, the vernacular is also often contrasted with a liturgical language, a specialized use of a former lingua franca. Similarly, in Hindu culture, traditionally religious or scholarly works were written in Sanskrit or in Tamil in Tamil country. With the rise of the movement from the 12th century onwards, religious works were created in the other languages, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu. These circumstances are a contrast between a vernacular and language variant used by the same speakers, according to one school of linguistic thought, all such variants are examples of a linguistic phenomenon termed diglossia. In it, the language is bifurcated, i. e. the speaker learns two forms of the language and ordinarily uses one but under special circumstances the other. The one most frequently used is the low variant, equivalent to the vernacular, the concept was introduced to linguistics by Charles A. Ferguson, but Ferguson explicitly excluded variants as divergent as dialects or different languages or as similar as styles or registers
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Gregorian chant
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Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the western Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, although popular legend credits Pope St. Gregory the Great with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman chant and Gallican chant. Gregorian chants were organized initially into four, then eight, the scale patterns are organized against a background pattern formed of conjunct and disjunct tetrachords, producing a larger pitch system called the gamut. The chants can be sung by using six-note patterns called hexachords, Gregorian melodies are traditionally written using neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern four-line and five-line staff developed. Multi-voice elaborations of Gregorian chant, known as organum, were a stage in the development of Western polyphony. Gregorian chant was sung by choirs of men and boys in churches. It is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass, although Gregorian chant is no longer obligatory, the Roman Catholic Church still officially considers it the music most suitable for worship. During the 20th century, Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence, singing has been part of the Christian liturgy since the earliest days of the Church. Until the mid-1990s, it was accepted that the psalmody of ancient Jewish worship significantly influenced and contributed to early Christian ritual. However, early Christian rites did incorporate elements of Jewish worship that survived in later chant tradition, canonical hours have their roots in Jewish prayer hours. Amen and alleluia come from Hebrew, and the threefold sanctus derives from the threefold kadosh of the Kedushah, the New Testament mentions singing hymns during the Last Supper, When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives Matthew 26.30. The 3rd-century Greek Oxyrhynchus hymn survived with musical notation, but the connection between this hymn and the plainchant tradition is uncertain, musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to appear in the 3rd century. The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the theologian Hippolytus, attests the singing of Hallel psalms with Alleluia as the refrain in early Christian agape feasts, around 375, antiphonal psalmody became popular in the Christian East, in 386, St. Ambrose introduced this practice to the West. In the fifth century, a school, the Schola Cantorum, was founded at Rome to provide training in church musicianship. Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th through the 9th centuries, around 410, St. Augustine described the responsorial singing of a Gradual psalm at Mass. 520, Benedict of Nursia established what is called the rule of St. Benedict, around 678, Roman chant was taught at York. Distinctive regional traditions of Western plainchant arose during this period, notably in the British Isles, Spain, Gaul and these traditions may have evolved from a hypothetical year-round repertory of 5th-century plainchant after the western Roman Empire collapsed. John the Deacon, biographer of Pope Gregory I, modestly claimed that the saint compiled a patchwork antiphonary, unsurprisingly and he reorganized the Schola Cantorum and established a more uniform standard in church services, gathering chants from among the regional traditions as widely as he could manage
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Musical instrument
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A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument, the history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual, such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment, Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the first device considered an instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some refer to as a musical instrument. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago, many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials. Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world, however, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in areas and was dominated by the Occident. Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material composition, their size, etc. However, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of instruments is called organology. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by using objects to create music from sounds. Primitive instruments were designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the pursuit of musical composition were unknown to early players of musical instruments. A player sounding a flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the notion of making music. Musical instruments are constructed in an array of styles and shapes
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Richard de Fournival
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Richard de Fournival or Richart de Fornival was a medieval philosopher and trouvère perhaps best known for the Bestiaire damour. Richard de Fournival was born in Amiens on October 10,1201 and he was the son of Roger de Fournival and Élisabeth de la Pierre. He was also half-brother of Arnoul, bishop of Amiens, richard was successively canon, deacon, and chancellor of the cathedral chapter of Notre Dame dAmiens. He was also a surgeon, by the authority of Pope Gregory IX. He died on March 1, either 1260 or 1259, richard also wrote several other lyrical poems besides the Bestiaire damour, the Commens damours, Censes d’amore, Poissance d’amore, De vetula and Amistié de vraie amour. As well he composed his list of books entitled the Biblionomia, the Nativitas, the Biblionomia is a list of 162 volumes, divided into grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry and arithmetic, music and astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. Whether this was a library or a real one is uncertain. But we can say, however, that at least 35 volumes have been identified as items in libraries and still existing in various modern libraries. The list does allow us to certain medieval writings. e. Richard’s library passed to Gérard dAbbeville, an archdeacon at Amiens, some of these volumes then passed to the Royal Library in the 18th century
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Isorhythm
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Isorhythm is a musical technique using a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a talea, in at least one voice part throughout a composition. Taleae are typically applied to one or more melodic patterns of pitches or colores, isorhythms first appear in French motets of the 13th century such as the Montpellier Codex. Ludwig later extended its use to the 14th century music of Guillaume de Machaut, subsequently, Heinrich Besseler and other musicologists expanded its scope further as an organizing structural element in 14th and early 15th-century compositions—in particular, motets. Some of the earliest works organized around isorhythms are early 14th-century motets by various composers in a manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel. Two of the eras most important composers of isorhythmic motets are Phillipe de Vitry,2, De souspirant/Tous corps qui de bien amer/Suspiro, is an example of typical 14th-century use of isorhythm. Isorhythm is an outgrowth of the rhythmic modes that governed most late medieval polyphony. That mixes mensuration and undergoes diminution by half—became a typical, even a feature of motets in the 14th century. First staff, preexisting Gregorian cantus firmus melody, from the first antiphon for the first nocturn of the commons for Apostles, the cantus firmus of the motet is a perfect fifth higher than the original chant, notes used for the tenor marked in red. Second staff, isorhythmic tenor as notated in mensural notation, numbers 1–3 and brackets indicate three rhythmically identical sequences. Staves 2–5, abbreviated transcription into modern notation, each line represents one full repetition of the tenors melody, including the three talea in each, resulting in a nine-part structure. The three mensuration signs in the line correspond to the change in time signatures,98,68,48. During the decades following and into the 15th century, upper voices became increasingly involved in isorhythmic organization, many compositions became isorhythmic in all voices, a practice known as panisorhythm. In such compositions, the length of the color and talea are often unequal, as an example, if the color includes nine notes and the talea five, the color would have to be repeated five times before the two schemes again realign. Examples can be found in motets and Mass movements by John Dunstable, Johannes Ciconia, a 15th-century Mass by a composer known only as Pycard found in the Old Hall manuscript, demonstrates the high sophistication and complexity of panisorhythmic techniques. The lower parts have a color and talea that unite the composition. The upper parts have four different talea, one for each section of the composition. The rhythmic relationship between upper and lower parts changes as the music progresses, each quarter note in the lower part equals 4 and ½ quarter notes in the upper parts, creating an uneven ratio of 4,9 that causes the parts to lose synchronization. The lower part then steadily contracts in a series of Pythagorean proportions until the parts come back into alignment, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell
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Guillaume de Machaut
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Guillaume de Machaut was a medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available, according to Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, Machaut was the last great poet who was also a composer. Well into the 15th century, Machauts poetry was admired and imitated by other poets. Machaut composed in a range of styles and forms. He is a part of the movement known as the ars nova. Machaut helped develop the motet and secular song forms, Machaut wrote the Messe de Nostre Dame, the earliest known complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer. Guillaume de Machaut was born about 1300, and educated in the region around Reims and his surname most likely derives from the nearby town of Machault,30 km northeast of Reims in the Ardennes region. He was employed as secretary to John I, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia from 1323 to 1346 and he often accompanied King John on his various trips, many of them military expeditions around Europe. He was named the canon of Verdun in 1330, Arras in 1332, by 1340, Machaut was living in Reims, having relinquished his other canonic posts at the request of Pope Benedict XII. Machaut survived the Black Death that devastated Europe, and spent his years living in Reims composing and supervising the creation of his complete-works manuscripts. His poem Le voir dit purports to recount a late love affair with a 19-year-old girl, Péronne dArmentières, when he died in 1377, other composers such as François Andrieu wrote elegies lamenting his death. That the majority of his lyrics are not set to music suggests that he wrote the text before setting some to music. In technical terms, Machaut was a master of elaborate rhyme schemes, Guillaume de Machauts narrative output is dominated by the dit. Machaut is also the author of a chronicle of the chivalric deeds of Peter I of Cyprus. His unusual self-reflective usage of himself as the narrator of his dits gleans some personal philosophical insights as well, at the end of his life, Machaut wrote a poetic treatise on his craft. This reflects on his conception of the organization of poetry into set genres and rhyme schemes, and this preoccupation with ordering his oeuvre is reflected in an index to MS A entitled Vesci lordonance que G. de Machaut veut quil ait en son livre. Machauts poetry had an effect on the works of Eustache Deschamps, Jean Froissart, Christine de Pizan, René dAnjou and Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem below, Puis quen oubli, is his 18th rondeau, Dit de lAlérion aka Dit des quatre oiseaux – A symbolic tale of love, the narrator raises four different birds, but each one flees him, one day the second bird comes back to him
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Adam de la Halle
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Adam de la Halle, also known as Adam le Bossu was a French-born trouvère, poet and musician. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois dArras, Adams other nicknames, le Bossu dArras and Adam dArras, suggest that he came from Arras, France. The sobriquet the Hunchback was probably a name, Adam himself points out that he was not one. His father, Henri de la Halle, was a well-known Citizen of Arras, and Adam studied grammar, theology, father and son had their share in the civil discords in Arras, and for a short time took refuge in Douai. Adam had been destined for the church, but renounced this intention, and married a certain Marie, who figures in many of his songs, rondeaux, motets and jeux-partis. Afterwards he joined the household of Robert II, Count of Artois, and then was attached to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX, whose fortunes he followed in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Italy. At the court of Charles, after Charles became king of Naples, Adam wrote his Jeu de Robin et Marion, Adams shorter pieces are accompanied by music, of which a transcript in modern notation, with the original score, is given in Coussemakers edition. His Jeu de Robin et Marion is cited as the earliest French play with music on a secular subject, the pastoral, which tells how Marion resisted the knight, and remained faithful to Robert the shepherd, is based on an old chanson, Robin maime, Robin ma. It consists of dialogue varied by refrains already current in popular song, the melodies to which these are set have the character of folk music, and are more spontaneous and melodious than the more elaborate music of his songs and motets. Fétis considered Le Jeu de Robin et Marion and Le Jeu de la feuillée forerunners of the comic opera. An adaptation of Le Jeu Robin et Marion, by Julien Tiersot, was played at Arras by a company from the Paris Opéra-Comique on the occasion of a festival in 1896 in honour of Adam de le Hale. His other play, Le jeu Adan or Le jeu de la Feuillee, is a drama in which he introduces himself, his father. His known works include thirty-six chansons, forty-six rondets de carole, eighteen jeux-partis, fourteen rondeaux, five motets, one rondeau-virelai, one ballette, one dit damour, Le jeu de Robin et Marion,13 rondeaux. Pro Musica Antiqua, Brussels, Safford Cape, conductor, recorded June 23,1953, in the Palais des Academies, Brussels. Research Period, The Central Middle Ages, Series A, Troubadours, Trouvères and Minnesingers, Series B, Music of the Minstrels, Series C, Early Polyphony before 1300. LP recording,1 disc, analog, monaural, 33⅓ rpm,12 in, Le jeu de Robin et Marion. CD recording,1 disc, digital, stereo, 4¾ in, Le jeu de Robin et Marion. Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Thomas Binkley, cond, recorded May 1987 at the Barfüsserkirche in Basel, Switzerland
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Luca della Robbia
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Luca della Robbia was an Italian sculptor from Florence. Della Robbia is noted for his colorful, tin-glazed terracotta statuary, though a leading sculptor in stone, he worked primarily in terracotta after developing his technique in the early 1440s. His large workshop produced both cheaper works cast from molds in multiple versions, and more expensive one-off individually modeled pieces, the vibrant, polychrome glazes made his creations both more durable and expressive. His work is noted for its charm rather than the drama of the work of some of his contemporaries, two of his famous works are The Nativity, c.1460 and Madonna and Child, c. In stone his most famous work is also his first major commission, Vasari, Gaurico, and several other early writers give contradictory accounts of Luca della Robbias youth, training, and early works. He was born in Florence, the son of a member of the Arte de Lana or wool-workers guild and he may have trained as a goldsmith under Leonardo di Ser Giovanni according to Vasari, before working with Ghiberti on the famous doors of the Florence Baptistry. He was heavily influenced by Donatello, and in the 1420s was used by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi for sculpture on his buildings and his important commission for the Cantoria of Florence Cathedral came before he joined the sculptors guild in 1432. According to Vasari, the Medici family were responsible for securing him the commission and his first documented commission, the Cantoria for the organ loft of Cathedral of Florence. During the seven years it took della Robbia to carve the reliefs under the supervision of Brunelleschi, while the earliest carved panels are fairly symmetric and lack movement, in later panels the movement of the singers becomes much more evident and dynamic. The Singing Gallery shows children singing, dancing, and making music to praise the Lord in the words of Psalm 150 and their figures are at once lively, finely observed, and gracefully combined in groups designed to fit the ten panels of the gallery. The advanced nature of the work has seen to establish Luca della Robbias skill in stone as well as secure his place as a major Florentine artist. Maria in Peretola, bronze angels to enrich the Singing Gallery, and, in collaboration with Michelozzo, in 1898 it was again removed to the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. An effigy of the bishop in a restful pose lies on a sarcophagus sculptured with graceful reliefs of angels holding a wreath which contains the inscription, above are three-quarter length figures of Christ between St John and the Virgin, of conventional type. The whole is surrounded by a frame formed of painted tiles. On each tile is painted, with pigments, a bunch of flowers. Della Robbias earliest surviving freestanding sculpture is the white tin-glazed terracotta Visitation in the church of San Giovanni Fuoricivitas of Pistoia, working with assistants, including members of his own family, della Robbia produced a number of decorative reliefs and altarpieces until the end of his life. One of the arguably finest examples is the enameled terra-cotta ceiling of the Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato and this medallion was set up on the facade of the Pazzi Palace to commemorate Renés visit to Florence in 1442. His works were popular in his time, and many were sent outside Florence
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Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (Florence)
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The Museo dellOpera del Duomo in Florence, Italy is a museum containing many of the original works of art created for the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence. As of August 2013, the director of the museum is Fr, the museum is located just east of the Duomo, near its apse. It opened in 1891, and now houses what has called one of the worlds most important collections of sculpture. It was reported on August 6,2013, that a tourist had accidentally snapped a finger off a 14th-century statue of the Virgin Mary by Giovanni dAmbrogio, the finger itself was from a later repair, not part of the original work. Museo dellOpera del Duomo - Official Site
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Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
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Guillaume Du Fay
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Guillaume Du Fay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. A central figure in the Burgundian School, he was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the composers in Europe in the mid-15th century. His unique and complex motet Nuper rosarum flores demonstrates the influential exchange of ideas among artists around the world during the early Renaissance period. From the evidence of his will, he was born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels, the illegitimate child of an unknown priest. She moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, in June 1414, aged around 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai. Later that year, on the evidence of music composed, and he likely stayed there until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai. From November 1418 to 1420 he was a subdeacon at Cambrai Cathedral, in 1420 he left Cambrai for Italy – first to Rimini and then to Pesaro, where he worked for the Malatesta family. Several of his compositions can be dated to this period, they contain references to Italy. There he met the composers Hugo and Arnold de Lantins, who were also among the musicians of the Malatesta household, in 1424 Du Fay returned to Cambrai, because of the illness and subsequent death of the relative with whom his mother was staying. By 1426, however, he had returned to Italy, in Bologna, he entered the service of Cardinal Louis Aleman, the papal legate. While in Bologna he became a deacon, and by 1428 he was ordained priest, Cardinal Aleman was driven from Bologna by the rival Canedoli family in 1428, and Du Fay also left, going to Rome. He became a member of the Papal Choir, the most prestigious musical establishment in Europe, serving first Pope Martin V, by this time his fame had spread, and he had become one of the most respected musicians in Europe. As a consequence, honors in the form of benefices came to him from churches in his homeland, in 1434 he was appointed maistre de chappelle in Savoy, where he served Duke Amédée VIII. He had left Rome because of a crisis in the finances of the choir while seeking to escape the turbulence. Eugene at this time lived in exile at the church of Santa Maria Novella. In 1437 Du Fay visited the town, when Niccolò died in 1441, the next Marquis maintained the contact with Du Fay, and not only continued financial support for the composer but copied and distributed some of his music. At this time Du Fay returned to his homeland, arriving in Cambrai by December of that year, in order to be a canon at Cambrai, he needed a law degree, which he obtained in 1437, he may have studied at University of Turin in 1436. One of the first documents mentioning him in Cambrai is dated 27 December 1440, Du Fay was to remain in Cambrai through the 1440s, and during this time he was also in the service of the Duke of Burgundy
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Nuper rosarum flores
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It has been argued that the motet presents homographic tenors and is therefore not an isorhythmic motet as often presented, since there are no isorhythms in its compositional proceedings. The title of the stems from the name of the cathedral itself, Santa Maria del Fiore. The opening lines of Dufays text refers to Pope Eugene IVs gift to the cathedral and these fourteen notes are used as a canonic color in the two tenors, with an interlocking talea pattern that totals 28 longa notes, of which the first 14 are rests. This is unusual for isorhythmic motets, in which the sections normally become progressively shorter, moreover, the final isorhythmic section provides the usual drive to an accelerated finish by giving the upper voices the shortest note values in the piece. Each of the motets four proportional sections has two sub-sections, suggesting even an eight-part structure, the first of these sub-sections includes just the two upper voices, while the second not only is sung by all voices but also features the entry of the two instrumental tenor parts. This large-scale plan contradicts the poetic structure of the text in the upper voices, the last two strophes run together and are a prayer to the Virgin on behalf of the people of Florence. The musicologist Charles Warren claimed that the structure of the motet mimicked the proportions of Santa Maria del Fiore. However, David Fallows, Charles Turner, and others subsequently cast doubt on Warrens figures, in no way immanent, or even superficially apparent, in the design of the cathedral of Florence. Instead, he concludes that Dufays inspiration was the biblical passage 1 Kings 6, 1–20 and this was the result of two Master studies in both Architecture and Ancient Music and presented in NEXUS2012-Milano. David Butler Cannata –Gabriela Ilnitchi Currie – Rena Charnin Mueller – John Luis Nadas, studies in Honor of Edward H. Roesner edited by David Butler Cannata, Gabriela Ilnitchi Currie, Rena Charnin Mueller, and John Luis Nadas, 121–43. Middleton, The American Institute of Musicology, tonal Coherence in a Motet of Dufay. London and Melbourne, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, Architecture and Music Reunited, A New Reading of Dufays Nuper rosarum flores and the Cathedral of Florence. Proportion and Form in the Continental Isorhythmic Motet c, Music Analysis 10, nos. 1–2, 89–124. Dufays Nuper rosarum flores, King Solomons Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin, journal of the American Musicological Society 47, no. Fictive Harmonies, Music and the Tempio Malatestiano, brunelleschi et Dufay au dôme de Florence. In Musique et arts plastiques, analogies et interférences, edited by Michèle Barbe, paris, Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne. Guillaume Dufay und die isorhythmische Motette, Gattungstradition und Werkcharakter an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, schriften zur Musikwissenschaft aus Münster 4. Une nouvelle lecture de Nuper rosarum flores et de sa relation numérologique controversée avec la Cathédrale de Santa Maria del Fiore, a Sequence for the Dedication of the Cathedral of Florence, Dufays Nuper almos rose flores
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Filippo Brunelleschi
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Filippo Brunelleschi was an Italian designer and a key figure in architecture, recognised to be the first modern engineer, planner and sole construction supervisor. He was one of the fathers of the Renaissance. He is generally known for developing a technique for linear perspective in art. Heavily depending on mirrors and geometry, to reinforce Christian spiritual reality and it also had the most profound – and quite unanticipated – influence on the rise of modern science. His accomplishments also include other works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering. His principal surviving works are to be found in Florence, Italy, unfortunately, his two original linear perspective panels have been lost. Brunelleschi was born in Florence, Italy, little is known about his early life, the only sources being Antonio Manetti and Giorgio Vasari. According to these sources, Filippos father was Brunellesco di Lippo, a notary, Filippo was the middle of their three children. The young Filippo was given a literary and mathematical education intended to enable him to follow in the footsteps of his father, a civil servant. Being artistically inclined, however, Filippo enrolled in the Arte della Seta, the silk merchants Guild, which also included goldsmiths, metalworkers and he became a master goldsmith in 1398. It was thus not a coincidence that his first important building commission, in 1401, Brunelleschi entered a competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery. Seven competitors each produced a bronze panel, depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac. Brunelleschis entry, which, with that of Lorenzo Ghiberti, is one of two to have survived, made reference to the Greco-Roman Boy with Thorn. Brunelleschis panel consists of several pieces bolted to the back plate, Brunelleschi is considered a seminal figure of the Renaissance. Around 1400, there emerged a cultural interest in humanitas, or humanism, however, this interest was restricted to a few scholars, writers, and philosophers before it began to influence the visual arts. It was in period that Brunelleschi and his friend Donatello visited Rome to study its ancient ruins. Donatello, like Brunelleschi, was trained as a goldsmith, though he worked in the studio of contemporarily well-known painter Ghiberti. Although the glories of Ancient Rome were a matter of popular discourse at the time, it seems no one had studied the physical fabric of its ruins in any detail until Brunelleschi
William Henry Grattan Flood (1913). "Motet". In Herbermann, Charles. Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
William Henry Grattan Flood (1913). "
