A History of Western Music: W. W. Norton StudySpace

1. Europe in the Seventeenth Century
1. Scientific revolution
1. 1609: Johannes Kepler described the orbits of planets.
2. Galileo Galilei discovered moons around Jupiter, using a newly designed telescope.
3. Sir Francis Bacon argued for a pure approach to science (i.e., relying on direct observation rather than appeal to authorities).
4. René Descartes developed a deductive approach to reason.
5. Sir Isaac Newton
1. Laws of gravitation (1660s)
2. Combined observation with mathematics
3. Set the framework for the scientific method
2. Politics, religion, and war
1. Resolution of conflicts, ca. 1600
1. Henri IV (France) guaranteed freedom to Protestants.
2. England and Spain ended years of warring between them.
2. New conflicts
1. Germany was devastated by the Thirty Years' War (1618-48).
2. England's civil war (1642-49) established a Presbyterian state church until the restoration of the monarchy (1660).
3. Authority of the state grew in most of Europe.
3. Colonialism
1. Americas and Asia were colonized by the English, French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese.
2. Imports to Europe included sugar and tobacco, farmed by slaves.
3. Musical exports to the Americas
1. Catholic music and villancicos to the Spanish colonies
2. Metric psalmody to the English colonies
4. Patronage
1. Capitalism created an atmosphere conducive to music-making.
1. Investors financed opera houses.
2. Increased demand for sheet music, instruments, and lessons
2. Private patronage
1. Italian nobles and the church hired the best and most innovative composers.
2. In France, the king supported music.
3. Public patronage through tickets and subscriptions
1. The first of many public opera houses opened in Venice in 1637.
2. Public concerts began in England in 1672.
2. From Renaissance to Baroque
1. "Baroque"
1. Definition: abnormal, exaggerated, in bad taste
2. Derives from the Portuguese word for misshapen pearl
3. Applied as a derisive term by post-Baroque critics because of the overly ornate art of the late Baroque (see HWM Figure 13.2)
4. Now applied to music from ca. 1600-1750 without a derisive connotation
2. Drama in the arts
1. Famous playwrights of the era include Shakespeare, Racine, and Moliére.
2. Poetry took on a theatrical quality (see HMW Source Reading, page 293).
3. Sculpture (compare HMW Figures 13.3 and 13.4)
1. Movement away from the Greek ideals that Michelangelo had emulated
2. More drama and emotion
3. In HWM Figure 13.5, a dramatic sculpture is situated where it will be theatrically lit by a window.
4. Architecture achieved drama using space and size (see HWM Figure 13.6).
3. The affections (i.e., emotional states of the soul)
1. People believed that spirits or "humors" in the body harbored emotions.
2. René Descartes, Passions of the Soul (1645-46)
1. Analyzes and catalogs the affections
2. For every emotion stimulating the senses there is a specific emotion evoked in the soul.
3. Charles Le Brun (1619-90) labeled emotions and their corresponding facial gestures (see HWM Figure 13.7).
4. Music could bring these humors into better balance.
1. Contrasting sections that depicted different moods helped balance the humors.
2. Instrumental music portrayed emotions generally.
3. Vocal music conveyed the emotions of the text, character, or dramatic situation.
4. The second practice (see HWM Source Reading, page 299)
1. The first practice, exemplified by Zarlino
1. Counterpoint rules could not be violated.
2. Dissonances had to be carefully controlled and restricted.
2. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
1. Believed counterpoint rules could be broken for dramatic effect
2. His madrigal Cruda Amarilli uses unprepared dissonances to express words such as "cruda" (cruel) and "ahi" (alas) (HWM Example 13.1).
3. Debate over Monteverdi's use of dissonance
1. Giovanni Maria Artusi, a student of Zarlino, criticized Cruda Amarilli.
2. Artusi cited examples of unprepared dissonance without referring to the text.
3. Monteverdi's brother defended him on the grounds that in this second practice (seconda pratica) music had to serve the text.
3. General Characteristics of Baroque Music
1. Texture
1. Polarity between the two essential lines, bass and melody
2. Basso continuo (or thoroughbass) notation, specifying only melody and bass with figures to indicate chords other than root position
3. Cello, bassoon, or viola da gamba played the bass line.
4. Keyboard or plucked instruments (such as the theorbo, HWM Figure 13.8) played both bass and chords.
5. Realization, the actual playing
1. Improvised performance
2. Written-out suggestions in modern editions, indicated by smaller notes (compare HWM Figure 13.9 with NAWM 67)
6. Concertato medium (from Italian concertare, "to reach agreement")
1. Combining voices with instruments
2. Genres included the concerted madrigal and the sacred concerto.
2. Tuning and harmony
1. Incompatible tuning systems were thrown together by the concertato medium.
1. Singers and violinists used just intonation.
2. Keyboard instruments used mean-tone temperament and only sounded good in keys with few sharps or flats.
3. Fretted instruments used equal temperament to guarantee all octaves would be in tune.
4. Equal temperament started to become more common.
2. Harmony
1. Figured bass writing led to thinking in terms of chords instead of intervals.
2. More types of dissonances were permitted.
3. Chromaticism expressed only emotions at first, but was later used in harmonic exploration.
4. Harmony now drove counterpoint.
3. Pieces were composed in both free and measured rhythms.
4. Performance practice
1. Continuo players fleshed out figured bass, using embellishments as well as chords.
2. Ornamentation consisted of brief ornaments as well as extended figuration (e.g., HWM Example 13.3).
3. The written music was only a guideline.
1. Singers added cadenzas to arias.
2. Arias might be added to or deleted from operas.
3. Organists were free to change the length of pieces to suit the service.
5. Many of the characteristics of Baroque music persisted for hundreds of years.

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