1.
Musical form
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The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections. According to Richard Middleton, musical form is the shape or structure of the work and he describes it through difference, the distance moved from a repeat, the latter being the smallest difference. Difference is quantitative and qualitative, how far, and of what type, in many cases, form depends on statement and restatement, unity and variety, and contrast and connection. This phrase may be regarded as the unit of musical form. Even at this level, the importance of the principles of repetition and contrast, weak and strong, climax and repose, thus, form may be understood on three levels of organization. For the purpose of exposition, these levels can be roughly designated as passage, piece. The smallest level of construction concerns the way musical phrases are organized into musical sentences and this may be compared to, and is often decided by, the verse form or meter of the words or the steps of a dance. In the analysis of form, any components that can be defined on the time axis are conventionally designated by letters. Upper-case letters are used for the most fundamental, while lower-case letters are used for sub-divisions, if one such section returns in a varied or modified form, a numerical digit or an appropriate number of prime symbols appears after the letter. Even at this simplest level, there are patterns that may be re-used on larger timescales, for example, consider the analogy with rhyme schemes, The following verse is composed of two differently-rhymed couplets, and thus its organization is binary or twofold. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are, up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. There once was a fellow from Leeds Who swallowed a packet of seeds, in less than an hour he burst into flower And he died trying to pull up the weeds. The next level concerns the structure of any single self-contained musical piece. If the hymn, ballad, blues or dance alluded to above simply repeats the same musical material indefinitely then the piece is said to be in strophic form overall. If it repeats with distinct, sustained changes each time, for instance in setting, ornamentation or instrumentation, then the piece is a theme and variations. If the theme is played, then a new theme is introduced, great arguments and misunderstanding can be generated by such terms as ternary and binary, as a complex piece may have elements of both at different organizational levels. The grandest level of organization may be referred to as cyclical form and it concerns the arrangement of several self-contained pieces into a large-scale composition. For example, a set of songs with a theme may be presented as a song-cycle
2.
George Frideric Handel
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George Frideric Handel was a German, later British baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712 and he was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition. Within fifteen years, Handel had started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera, musicologist Winton Dean writes that his operas show that Handel was not only a great composer, he was a dramatic genius of the first order. As Alexanders Feast was well received, Handel made a transition to English choral works, after his success with Messiah he never composed an Italian opera again. Almost blind, and having lived in England for nearly fifty years, he died in 1759 and his funeral was given full state honours, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. Handel was born in 1685 in Halle-on-Saal, Duchy of Magdeburg, to Georg Händel and his father,63 when George Frideric was born, was an eminent barber-surgeon who served the court of Saxe-Weissenfels and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Georg Händel was the son of a coppersmith, Valentin Händel who had emigrated from Eisleben in 1608 with his first wife Anna Belching and they were Protestants and chose reliably Protestant Saxony over Silesia, a Hapsburg possession as religious tensions mounted in the years before the Thirty Years War. Halle was a prosperous city, home of a salt-mining industry. Even the smaller churches all had able organists and fair choirs, and humanities, the Thirty Years War brought extensive destruction to Halle, and by the 1680s it was impoverished. But since the middle of the war the city was under the administration of the Duke of Saxony, the arts and music, however, flourished only among the higher strata, which did not describe Handels family. Handel was the child of this marriage, the first son died still born. Two younger sisters were born after the birth of George Frideric, Dorthea Sophia, born 6 October 1687 and Johanna Christiana, born 10 January 1690. Early in his life Handel is reported to have attended the gymnasium in Halle, Mainwaring is the source for almost all information of Handels childhood, and much of that information came from J. C. Smith, Jr. Handels confidant and copyist. Whether they came from Smith or elsewhere, Mainwaring frequently relates misinformation and it is from Mainwaring that the portrait of Handels father as implacably opposed to any musical education comes. This did nothing to dampen young Handels inclination, in fact, Mainwaring tells the story of Handels secret attic spinnet, Handel found means to get a little clavichord privately conveyd to a room at the top of the house. To this room he constantly stole when the family was asleep, but Handel had to have had some experience with the keyboard to have made the impression in Weissenfels that resulted in his receiving formal musical training. Somehow Handel made his way to the organ, where he surprised everyone with his playing. Overhearing this performance and noting the youth of the performer caused the Duke to recommend to Georg Händel that Handel be given musical instruction, Handels father engaged the organist at the Halle parish church, the young Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, to instruct Handel
3.
Messiah (Handel)
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It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known, Handels reputation in England, where he had lived since 1712, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public taste, although its structure resembles that of opera, it is not in dramatic form, there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennenss text is a reflection on Jesus as the Messiah called Christ. The text begins in Part I with prophecies by Isaiah and others, and moves to the annunciation to the shepherds, in Part II, Handel concentrates on the Passion and ends with the Hallelujah chorus. In Part III he covers the resurrection of the dead and Christs glorification in heaven, Handel wrote Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional settings for many of the individual numbers. In the years after his death, the work was adapted for performance on a larger scale, with giant orchestras. In other efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and amplified by Mozart, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries the trend has been towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Handels original intentions, although big Messiah productions continue to be mounted. A near-complete version was issued on 78 rpm discs in 1928, the composer George Frideric Handel, born in Halle, Germany in 1685, took up permanent residence in London in 1712, and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. Within a large and varied output, Handel was a vigorous champion of Italian opera. He subsequently wrote and presented more than 40 such operas in Londons theatres, by the early 1730s public taste for Italian opera was beginning to fade. The popular success of John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepuschs The Beggars Opera had heralded a spate of English-language ballad-operas that mocked the pretensions of Italian opera, with box-office receipts falling, Handels productions were increasingly reliant on private subsidies from the nobility. Such funding became harder to obtain after the launch in 1730 of the Opera of the Nobility, Handel overcame this challenge, but he spent large sums of his own money in doing so. Although prospects for Italian opera were declining, Handel remained committed to the genre, in Rome in 1707–08 he had written two Italian oratorios at a time when opera performances in the city were temporarily forbidden under papal decree. His first venture into English oratorio had been Esther, which was written, in 1732 Handel brought a revised and expanded version of Esther to the Kings Theatre, Haymarket, where members of the royal family attended a glittering premiere on 6 May. Its success encouraged Handel to write two more oratorios, All three oratorios were performed to large and appreciative audiences at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford in mid-1733. Undergraduates reportedly sold their furniture to raise the money for the five-shilling tickets, in 1735 Handel received the text for a new oratorio named Saul from its librettist Charles Jennens, a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interests. Because Handels main creative concern was still with opera, he did not write the music for Saul until 1738, the work, after opening at the Kings Theatre in January 1739 to a warm reception, was quickly followed by the less successful oratorio Israel in Egypt
4.
Prelude, Op. 28, No. 15 (Chopin)
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15, by Frédéric Chopin, known as the Raindrop prelude, is one of the 24 Chopin preludes. Usually lasting between five and seven minutes, this is the longest of the preludes, the prelude is noted for its repeating A-flat, which appears throughout the piece and sounds like raindrops to many listeners. Some, though not all, of Opus 28 was written during Chopin and George Sands stay at a monastery in Valldemossa, Majorca in 1838. In her Histoire de ma vie, Sand related how one evening she and her son Maurice, returning from Palma in a rainstorm, found a distraught Chopin who exclaimed. I knew well that you were dead, while playing his piano he had a dream, He saw himself drowned in a lake. Heavy drops of icy water fell in a rhythm on his breast. He was even angry that I should interpret this in terms of imitative sounds and he protested with all his might – and he was right to – against the childishness of such aural imitations. His genius was filled with the sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought. Sand did not say which prelude Chopin played for her on that occasion,15, because of the repeating A flat, with its suggestion of the gentle patter of rain. However, Peter Dayan points out that Sand accepted Chopins protests that the prelude was not an imitation of the sound of raindrops, the prelude opens with a serene theme in D flat. It then changes to an interlude in C sharp minor, with the dominant pedal never ceasing. The repeating A flat, which has been throughout the first section. Following this, the ends with a repetition of the original theme. Frederik Niecks says, This C sharp minor portion, preludes Prelude No.15 on YouTube, performed by Martha Argerich Prelude No.15 on YouTube, performed by Valentina Igoshina
5.
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
6.
St John Passion
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The Passio secundum Joannem or St John Passion, BWV245, is a Passion or oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, the older of two surviving Passions by Bach. It was written during Bachs first year as director of music in Leipzig and was first performed on April 7,1724. The structure of the falls in two halves, intended to flank a sermon. Compared with the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion has been described as extravagant, with an expressive immediacy, at times more unbridled. The work is most often today in the 1724 version although Bach revised it in 1725,1732. Bach quickly agreed to their desire to move the service to St. Nicholas Church and he also asked that the harpsichord be repaired. The council agreed and sent a flyer announcing the new location to all the people around Leipzig, the council made the arrangements requested by Bach regarding the harpsichord and space needed for the choir. Bach followed chapters 18 and 19 of the Gospel of John in the Luther Bible, the compiler of the additional poetry is unknown. Models are the Brockes Passion and a Johannes-Passion by Christian Heinrich Postel, the first scene is in the Kidron Valley, and the second in the palace of the high priest Kaiphas. Part Two shows three scenes, one with Pontius Pilate, one at Golgatha, and the third finally at the burial site, the dramatic argument between Pilate, Jesus, and the crowd is not interrupted by reflective elements but a single central chorale, #22. Part One Part Two Bach followed the Gospel of John but added two lines from the Gospel of Matthew, the crying of Peter and the tearing of the curtain in the temple. For the words of the aria Ach, mein Sinn, Bach used an adaptation of a 1675 poem by Christian Weise, #21b Sei gegrüßet, lieber Jüdenkönig reappears as #25b Schreibe nicht, der Jüden König. The St John Passion is written for an ensemble of soloists, four-part choir, strings and basso continuo and pairs of flauti traversi and oboes. For special colours Bach also used lute, viola damore and viola da gamba, in present day performances the part of Jesus is given to one bass soloist, Pilate and the bass arias to another. Some tenors sing the Evangelist – a very demanding part –, the smaller parts are sometimes performed by choir members. Researchers have discovered that Bach revised his St John Passion several times before producing a version in the 1740s. Alternate numbers that Bach introduced in 1725 but later removed can be found in the appendix to scores of the work, the St John Passion was not Bachs first passion. While he was working as organist in 1708 and Konzertmeister in 1714 in Weimar, Bach possibly wrote a Passion, known as the Weimarer Passion, but it is now lost
7.
Subject (music)
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In music, a subject is the material, usually a recognizable melody, upon which part or all of a composition is based. In forms other than the fugue this may be known as the theme, a subject may be perceivable as a complete musical expression in itself, separate from the work in which it is found. In contrast to an idea or motif, a subject is usually a phrase or period. The Encyclopédie Fasquelle defines a theme as Any element, motif, Thematic changes and processes are often structurally important, and theorists such as Rudolph Reti have created analysis from a purely thematic perspective. Fred Lerdahl describes thematic relations as associational and thus outside his cognitive-based generative theorys scope of analysis, Music based on a single theme is called monothematic, while music based on several themes is called polythematic. Most fugues are monothematic and most pieces in sonata form are polythematic, in the exposition of a fugue, the principal theme is announced successively in each voice – sometimes in a transposed form. In some compositions, a subject is announced and then a second melody, sometimes called a countersubject or secondary theme. Music without subjects/themes, or without recognizable, repeating, and developing subjects/themes, is called athematic, examples include the pre-twelve-tone or early atonal works of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Alois Hába. Schoenberg once said that, intoxicated by the enthusiasm of having freed music from the shackles of tonality, in fact, I … believed that now music could renounce motivic features and remain coherent and comprehensible nevertheless. Examples in the works of later composers include Polyphonie X and Structures I by Pierre Boulez, Sonata for Two Pianos by Karel Goeyvaerts, and Punkte by Karlheinz Stockhausen. In a fugue, when the first voice has completed the subject, and the voice is playing the answer. The countersubject usually contrasts with the subject/answer phrase shape, in a fugue, a countersubject is the continuation of counterpoint in the voice that began with the subject, occurring against the answer. It is not usually regarded as a feature of fugue. Attacco Cell Figure Formula composition Leitmotif Thematic transformation Benward, Bruce, Music in Theory and Practice, eighth edition, vol. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, the Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Une nouvelle grammaire musicale, prémices et premiers essais / A New Musical Grammar, Principles, la Scena Musicale 6, no.3. Lerdahl, Fred. Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Encyclopédie de la musique,3 vols, Music and Discourse, Toward a Semiology of Music, translated by Caroline Abbate
8.
Tonality
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Tonality is a musical system that arranges pitches or chords to induce a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, and attractions. In this hierarchy, the pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the chord is considered to be the key of a piece or song. Thus a piece in which the chord is C major is said to be in the key of C. Simple folk music songs often start and end with the tonic note, the most common use of the term. is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910. Contemporary classical music from 1910 to the 2000s may practice or avoid any sort of harmony in almost all Western popular music remains tonal. Harmony in jazz music includes many, if not all, tonal characteristics, All harmonic idioms in popular music are tonal, and none is without function. Tonality is a system of tones in which one tone becomes the central point for the remaining tones. The other tones in a piece are all defined in terms of their relationship to the tonic. In tonality, the tonic is the tone of complete relaxation and stability, the cadence in which the dominant chord or dominant seventh chord resolves to the tonic chord plays an important role in establishing the tonality of a piece. Tonal music is music that is unified and dimensional, the term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840. According to Carl Dahlhaus, however, the term tonalité was only coined by Castil-Blaze in 1821, major-minor tonality is also called harmonic tonality, diatonic tonality, common practice tonality, functional tonality, or just tonality. This sense also applies to the tonic/dominant/subdominant harmonic harmonic constellations in the theories of Jean-Philippe Rameau as well as the 144 basic transformations of twelve-tone technique, any rational and self-contained theoretical arrangement of musical pitches, existing prior to any concrete embodiment in music. For example, Sainsbury, who had Choron translated into English in 1825, while tonality qua system constitutes a theoretical abstraction from actual music, it is often hypostatized in musicological discourse, converted from a theoretical structure into a musical reality. As a term to contrast with modal and atonal, implying that tonal music is discontinuous as a form of expression from modal music on the one hand. Musical phenomena arranged or understood in relation to a referential tonic, Musical phenomena perceived or preinterpreted in terms of the categories of tonal theories. In major and minor harmonies, the fifth is often implied. To function as a tonic, a chord must be either a major or a minor triad, dominant function requires a major-quality triad with a root a perfect fifth above the affiliated tonic and containing the leading tone of the key
9.
Cadence (music)
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In Western musical theory, a cadence is a melodic or harmonic configuration that creates a sense of resolution. A harmonic cadence is a progression of two chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music, a rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase. A cadence is labeled more or less weak or strong depending on its sense of finality, harmonic rhythm plays an important part in determining where a cadence occurs. Cadences are strong indicators of the tonic or central pitch of a passage or piece, edward Lowinsky proposed that the cadence was the cradle of tonality. In music of the common practice period, cadences are divided into four types according to their progression, authentic, plagal, half. Typically, phrases end on authentic or half cadences, and the terms plagal, each cadence can be described using the Roman numeral system of naming chords, Authentic cadence, V to I. A seventh above the root is added to create V7. The The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians says, This cadence is a microcosm of the tonal system and it is virtually obligatory as the final structural cadence of a tonal work. A perfect cadence is a progression from V to I in major keys and this is generally the strongest type of cadence and often found at structurally defining moments. This strong cadence achieves complete harmonic and melodic closure and it has to be noted that Beethoven in particular gets so much mileage out of this cadence as for it to become one of his most characteristic and recognizable musical thumbprints. The Diabelli Variations and the C major climax of the movement of the Opus 132 String Quartet - even though it is described as being in Lydian mode on F - are two powerful examples. Imperfect authentic cadence, best divided into three categories,1. Root position IAC, similar to a PAC, but the highest voice is not the tonic, inverted IAC, similar to a PAC, but one or both chords is inverted. Leading tone IAC, the V chord is replaced with the viio/subV chord, evaded cadence, V42 to I6. Because the seventh must fall step wise, it forces the cadence to resolve to the less stable first inversion chord, usually to achieve this a root position V changes to a V42 right before resolution, thereby evading the cadence. Half cadence, any cadence ending on V, whether preceded by II, ii, vi, IV, with the addition of motion in the upper part to the sixth degree, it becomes the Landini cadence. Lydian cadence, The Lydian half-cadence is similar to the Phrygian-half, involving iv6-V in the minor, the difference is that in the Lydian-half, the whole iv6 is raised by a half-step. In other words, the Phrygian-half begins with the first chord built on scale degree P4, Burgundian cadences, Became popular in Burgundian music
