Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Opera in the Late Seventeenth Century
  - Other Vocal Music
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century
Opera in the Late Seventeenth Century
  1. Venice

    1. This city continued to be the main center for Italian opera.

    2. Singers became the main attraction.
      1. Famous singers were highly paid.
      2. Composers began to write arias to serve as singers' vehicles.
      3. The number of arias in an opera grew from ca. twenty-four in the middle of the century to sixty in the 1670s.
        1. The favorite aria form was strophic.
        2. Also common were two- and three-part arias in forms such as AB, ABB, and ABA.
        3. Many arias had refrains.

    3. Venetian opera was exported.
      1. Carlo Pallavicino (1630–1688) and Agostino Steffani (1654–1728), worked in Germany.
        1. CHMW, ex. 10.1, shows the coloratura passages and modest dimensions of Steffani's style.
        2. Typical features of the period are a motto beginning, in which the voice announces a short subject that will be developed later in the aria, and a walking bass accompaniment.

  2. Naples

    1. This city was home to the new style that would become predominant.

    2. Composers in Naples were more concerned with musical elegance and less with the drama.

    3. Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) and the Naples style
      1. Recitatives were short and expressed quick changes of feeling in two styles:
        1. Recitativo semplice (or recitativosecco) was more speechlike, conveying dialogue or monologue with only basso continuo accompaniment.
        2. Recitativo obbligato (later also called recitativo accompagnato or strumento) emphasized tense moments in the drama and was accompanied by the orchestra, which reinforced the emotions.
        3. Recitativo arioso (aria-like recitative) was a blend of recitative and aria.
      2. The da capo aria was the favorite aria form.
        1. Da capo means "to the head," the words at the close of the second section that tell the performers to repeat the first section
        2. Used for two contrasting, but related, sentiments
      3. Example: NAWM 66 and CHWM, ex. 10.2, Mi rivedi from La Griselda (1721)
        1. The "A" section portrays Griselda's dejection after being sent home by her husband, (You see me again . . .) in C minor.
        2. The "B" section portrays her joy at returning home (Yet there is . . .), modulating from C minor to E-flat major.
        3. An opening ritornello is not repeated before the return to the "A" section (repeat of "A" section is indicated as "Dal segno" instead of da capo).
        4. A ritornello also closes the aria.

  3. France

    1. Although Italian operas were produced in France, French genres of staged music evolved separately.

    2. French national traditions
      1. Ballet had flourished since the sixteenth century.
      2. Classical French tragedy, such as works by Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) and Jean Racine (1639–1699), demanded that poetry and drama be given priority on stage.

    3. Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)
      1. Biography
        1. Born in Italy, came to Paris at a young age
        2. Member of King Louis XIV's vingt-quatre violons du roy (the twenty-four member string orchestra of the king) for which he also composed
        3. In 1672 became the virtual musical dictator of France when his Académie Royale de Musique was granted a monopoly on sung drama
      2. He developed the tragédie en musique (later called tragédie lyrique), which reconciled the demands of drama, music and ballet.
        1. To libretti on mythological plots by Jean-Philippe Quinault
        2. Frequent long interludes with dancing and choral singing, popular with French audiences
        3. Dances from the sung dramas so popular they were often arranged into suites
      3. Lully's adaptation of recitative in the French language
        1. récitatif simple, using shifting meter to declaim the dialogue
        2. récitatif mesuré, which was more songlike, for example, NAWM 68b and CHWM, ex. 10.3, Armide (1686) uses mixed duple and triple measures, allowing accented syllables to fall on downbeats.
      4. French ouverture, a two-part movement before ballets, was established by Lully and used by other composers for the rest of the Baroque era.
        1. The first section is homophonic, slow and majestic, with dotted rhythms.
        2. The second section is faster, with some fugal imitation but no less serious.
        3. Example: NAWM 68a, Armide (Overture)

    4. Lully's followers in France and Germany continued to use five-part string scoring, augmented by a few woodwinds.

  4. England

    1. Masque was an aristocratic entertainment similar to French court ballet, e.g. Milton's Comus (1634) with music by Henry Lawes (1596–1662) is the best known.

    2. Stage plays without music were banned 1649–60.

    3. Plays with music (semi-operas) continued to be popular after the Restoration (1660).

    4. Henry Purcell (1659–1695) was a student of John Blow and held posts in London.
      1. His output includes sacred choral music, instrumental music and incidental music for plays.
      2. Dido and Aeneas (1689) was composed for a girls' boarding school.
        1. The libretto is an adaptation of Vergil's Aeneid (by Nahum Tate).
        2. The work has four principal roles plus a small orchestra (strings and continuo).
        3. It is in three acts, taking up only about one hour.
        4. It begins with a French overture in the style of Lully.
        5. Includes choruses and dances.
        6. Recitatives are sensitive to English text declamation.
        7. Arias (e.g., NAWM 69, When I am laid in earth) are on a ground bass.
          1. Preceded by recitative with a stepwise descent to portray impending death
          2. Dido's aria (lament) sung over a descending ground bass line, a technique associated with Italian laments
          3. Followed by a chorus, With drooping Wings, using the descending figure again

    5. After Purcell, English audiences preferred the products of foreign composers and no national tradition of opera developed.

  5. Germany

    1. Singspiel ("sing-play"), the German version of opera, used spoken dialogue instead of recitative

    2. Hamburg opera (1678–1738)
      1. The first public opera house outside Venice
      2. Most productions translations or imitations of Italian operas

    3. Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739) wrote more than a hundred operas for Hamburg.
      1. His style incorporated both Italian and German elements.
      2. His librettos were similar to those of Venetian opera.
      3. His more virtuoso arias were even more brilliant than Venetian arias.
      4. His slower arias were broad and expressive, but not like Italian bel canto.

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