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:
  - Early Eighteenth Century Music in Italy and France
  - The Life and Music Of J. S. Bach
  - The Life and Music of George Frideric Handel
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century
Early Eighteenth Century Music in Italy and France
  1. Background of Early Eighteenth-Century Music

    1. Two styles of music could be heard in Paris from ca. 1720 to 1750.
      1. 1. La musique barroque, fast and bold Italian sonatas and concertos (e.g., those of Vivaldi)
      2. La musique chantante (songful music), less artful and more natural music, such as vocal melodies by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), also called the galant style

  2. Italian Music and Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)

    1. Venice produced the most glamorous music in Europe and continued to be a musical center.
      1. Gondoliers and other ordinary people sang in the streets and canals.
      2. Wealthy families owned opera theaters and supported musicians.
      3. Saint Mark's and other churches put on grand instrumental and vocal concerts on festival days.

    2. Biographical background
      1. Son of a violinist at St. Mark's chapel
      2. Educated for the priesthood and for music
      3. Known as the red-headed priest (il prete rosso)
      4. Worked at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà in Venice from 1703 to 1740 (see vignette in CHWM)
        1. The Pietà was a conservatory for orphans and illegitimate children, all teenage girls.
        2. Vivaldi was the general superintendent of music for the school.
        3. Concerts at the Pietà attracted large audiences.
        4. Vivaldi was expected to compose new music for every event.

    3. Output
      1. Operas by commission (49)
      2. Concertos (over 500) for the Pietà and for foreign patrons
      3. Solo and trio sonatas (90)
      4. Vocal music, including cantatas, motets, and oratorios

    4. Vivaldi's operas were frequently staged in Venetian theaters.

    5. Vivaldi's concertos
      1. Vivaldi was influenced by Corelli and Torelli.
      2. About two-thirds of his concertos are solo concertos.
        1. Most of his solo concertos are for violin.
        2. The remainder are for cello, flute, or bassoon.
      3. He also composed concertos for two equal violins.
      4. His concerti grossi often highlighted only one or two of the concertino instruments.
      5. The orchestra at the Pietà probably consisted of twenty-five strings, organ or harpsichord continuo, and a few woodwinds or horns.
      6. Form
        1. Three movements, fast-slow-fast
        2. The slow movement is in the same key or a closely related one (relative minor, dominant, subdominant).
        3. The final Allegro was usually shorter and livelier than the first Allegro.
        4. Fast movements usually used ritornellos in the ripieno alternating with solo episodes.

    6. NAWM 76, Concerto Grosso Op. 3, No. 2, RV 578
      1. The first Allegro (NAWM 76b) follows an introductory Adagio (NAWM 76a).
      2. The opening ritornello has three motivic sections (see CHWM, ex. 12.1).
      3. The final statement of the ritornello reverses the motivic sections.

    7. NAWM 77, Concerto for Violin, Op. 9, No 2, RV 345(1728)
      1. Vivaldi was the first composer to make the slow movement equal to the fast movements.
      2. Performers treated slow movements like opera arias, and embellished them.
      3. Vivaldi's late works point toward Classical style.

  3. Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764)

    1. Foremost French musician of the eighteenth century

    2. Background
      1. Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la Pouplinière (1693–1762) was his patron.
        1. La Pouplinière sponsored concerts.
        2. Aristocrats and intellectuals visited his salon.
      2. Taught only by his father, an organist
      3. Published his Traité de l'harmonie (Treatise on Harmony) in 1722 and became famous.
      4. Composed his most famous music between the ages of fifty and fifty-six
      5. In 1723, moved to Paris and became more famous

    3. Operas
      1. Rameau composed several operas that were performed in Paris in the 1730s.
      2. Parisian intellectuals debated the merits of his works versus those of Lully.
      3. His detractors called his music difficult, forced, grotesque, thick, mechanical, and unnatural, that is, Baroque.

    4. Rameau's theoretical works (p. 264)
      1. His main intent was to derive the basic principles of harmony from the laws of acoustics.
      2. The chord was the primal element in music, based on intervals found in the basic division of string lengths.
      3. The triad could be expanded to seventh through eleventh chords.
      4. Rameau coined the term basse fondamentale, or root progressions in a succession of harmonies, with chords retaining their identities in all inversions.
      5. Each triad had a different function in each key, which made modulation possible using a single chord (in modern terminology, the pivot chord).

    5. Musical style of Rameau's operas
      1. In keeping with the fashions of the time, the drama became less important than the decorative elements such as scenic spectacle and dances.
      2. Self-contained scenes, called entrées, had their own unrelated plots, e.g. Les Indes galantes.
        1. Each scene from exotic places such as Peru and Turkey
        2. Rameau composed the music for these entrées with more drama than the librettos suggest.
      3. Many features of Rameau's style resemble those of Lully.
      4. Rameau's melodies were consistent with his harmonic theory, and contain triads or in other ways support harmonic progressions.
      5. Harmony is mostly diatonic but with modulations and secondary chords in orderly relationships to the major-minor tonality of the movements.
      6. Forms for the overture varied and could be based on French or Italian models. Sometimes his overtures contained a theme that would reappear later in the opera.
      7. Airs for voice in AB or ABA or sometimes rondo-like forms.
      8. Monologues (e.g., NAWM 78, Ah! faut-il from Hippolyte et Aricie) have dramatic force through expressive dissonances that propel the harmony forward.

    6. Rameau's instrumental style
      1. Overtures, dances, and descriptive symphonies accompanied the stage action in his operas.
      2. Tone painting common in his operas (e.g., orchestral depictions of thunder or earthquakes).
      3. His clavecin pieces are similar in style to those of Couperin.

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