Study Guide

Unit 3 and Final Exam, MUH 3211

Unit 3 textbook chapters: 12-15

Exam Format

Total points possible: 85

Listening (same format of Title/Composer or Style from last exam) 20 pts

Matching (names and concepts, as we had in the two previous exams) 15 pts

Score Identification: two pieces from the anthology, title removed. Comment on the
scoring, dynamics, rhythm, melody, harmony, and form of the piece. Put the piece in its 14 pts
historical context.

Two score identification questions each 7 points.

Four short-answer questions will be drawn from the GRQs 16 pts

- each four points, and answer all questions

Essay question 20 pts

Topics at a glance:
Monody Invention of Opera Baroque classifications by Scacchi
Instrumental music Opera seria Handel
J.S. Bach

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Prepare for the listening and score identification sections of the exam by reviewing these composers and titles:

1. Claudio Monteverdi, Cruda Amarilli (“Cruel Amaryllis”) OAWM pp.163-166, Track 65.

2. Giulio Caccini, Amarilli, mia bella (Amaryllis, my beautiful one) OAWM pp.178-180, Track 68.

3. Claudio Monteverdi, L’Orfeo favola in musica, Act 2, OAWM pp.181-194, Track 72, “Tu se' morta, mia
vita, ed io respiro”
(Note that your anthology includes eight tracks from L’Orfeo [tracks 69-76]. I am only going to consider ONE
track, “Tu se' morta, mia vita, ed io respiro,” for our listening portion of our exam.)

4. Heinrich Schütz, Symphoniae sacrae: I, Op. 6, “O quam tu pulchra es” (“O how beautiful art thou”)
OAWM pp.202-208, Track 78

5. Heinrich Schütz, Symphoniae sacrae: III, Op. 12, Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich, (“Saul, Saul, why do
you persecute me?”) OAWM pp. 209-214, Track 79

6. Jean-Baptiste Lully, Atys, Overture, OAWM pp. 216-221, Track 80

7. Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas, Act 3, Conclusion, OAWM pp. 223-232, Track 82 (“Thy Hand,
Belinda”)

8. Johann Sebastian Bach, Fugue in G minor, OAWM pp. 259-262, Track 85

9. Johann Sebastian Bach, French Suite No. 5 in G, OAWM pp. 263-268, Tracks 86-92

10. Antonio Vivaldi, La primavera (“Spring”), First movement. OAWM pp. 233-255, Track 83

11. George Frideric Handel, HWV 17, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Act I, Scene 3, “Empio, dirò, tu sei” (“Evil
you are, I say”). OAWM pp. 291–293, CD 2 Track 1.

12. George Frideric Handel, an example of self-borrowing. “No, di voi non vo’ fidarmi” à Messiah Part I,
“For unto us a Child is born.” OAWM pp. 295–304, CD 2 Track 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR7X4z5ujdE Here is a recording for your use.
Unfortunately, our recordings omit “No, di voi…”. (But you have the score in your anthology.)

13. J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D, BWV 1050, first movement, Allegro. OAWM pp. 270-282,
Track 93

14. J.S. Bach, Christ lag in Todesbanden (“Christ lay in the bonds of death”), BWV 4. OAWM CD 2 Tracks
3-5 (I. Sinfonia, II. “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” and V. Chorus, “Hier ist das rechte Osterlamm”).

Although I make this list to aid your studying for “listening” and “score identification,” it goes without saying that
all the listening together with score study that you do will also help you in the other sections of the exam. Don’t
skimp on listening!

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Essay Questions

You will be able to prepare your essay response before you take the exam. Choose to write on ONE of the two
prompts here:

1. Explain how the doctrine of the affections related to music in both theory and practice in the seventeenth
century.
Put your answer into a perspective that accounts for our early discussions of Ancient Greek ethos, the
medieval belief in the harmonic proportions of the universe, and Renaissance humanist beliefs about imitating
text.
Provide specific examples of how each of these stylistic paradigms worked, by writing about specific
pieces and of particular people—composers, music theorists, and philosophers.
What are the similarities? What are the differences?

2. Describe three different ways in which prominent composers of the early eighteenth century earned their
livelihoods and how those careers guided their output and styles.
Contrast their situations with the anonymity of many of the composers of the Middle Ages. Why do we
know the names of Léonin, Pérotin, Hildegard of Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut, and Francesco Landini? How
did they earn their livelihoods? What types of access to intellectual pursuits did they have that most musicians did
not?
Be as specific as possible.

Outline
UNIT 3: Baroque

Chapter 12: Rationalism and Its Impact on Music

1. Age of Reason
René Descartes (1596-1650)
• Rationalism relies on reason. Descartes didn’t want to be influenced by his senses, so he did his thinking
behind closed doors. Discourse on Method (1637): systematically pursued application of reason in the
service of philosophical understanding, rejecting received opinion and evidence of our fallible human
senses.
• Cogito Ergo Sum: Descartes forced himself to abandon the authority of the church and scripture, every
presupposition except reason itself: “And observing that this truth: I am thinking, therefore I exist, was
so strong and so sure, that all the most extravagant assumptions of the skeptics were not capable of
shaking it, I judged that I could accept it, without scruple, as the first principle of the philosophy that I
was seeking.”

The ideal literary model for rationalism is the persuasive speech and the essay

2. Aesthetic Considerations
• “Baroque” Era in Music (1600-1750)
The term “Baroque” is ahistorical, derogatory, and borrowed from art history. It means, “overly ornamented,
distorted, bizarre, eccentric, or even grotesque”
• Examples from visual arts: Peter Paul Rubens and John Milton

3. The Doctrine of Affections

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 • Baroque Music’s goal is to impose a particular state of mind on the audience. In the seventeenth-century
view, states of mind were known as affections, passions, or humors.

The rationalist Descartes explored these passions in. 1649 treatise The Passions of the Soul. He described the
affections as static, not fluid in the way that we now think of emotions.
Descartes identified six basic passions: love, hate, joy, sorrow, wonder/admiration, and desire.

4. The Florentine Camerata (1570s)

• Group of intellectuals, musicians and poets who met to discuss trends in the arts
• Count Giovanni de’ Bardi played important role of host
• Vincenzo Galilei – father of Galileo, lutenist and singer
• Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (1581): this treatise presented a critique of
the sixteenth-century polyphonic technique, based on aesthetic grounds, developed from
the theories of the Greeks
• Galilei objected to polyphonic text settings because he felt the created confusion rather
than clarity in interpreting the affections. He commonly used the phrase ‘concetti
dell’anima,’ or ‘conceptions of the soul,’ that the words intended to express.
Conclusion: Galilei proposed that in order to express the affections of the speaker, the music should imitate not
the poetic images themselves but the manner in which an actor spoke in assuming a particular role and creating a
particular affection.

Listen to our Unit 2 madrigal repertoire for the types of music Galilei objected to. Remember Thomas Weelkes’s
madrigal As Vesta was (“running down a main, running down a main, running down a main…”)

Galilei’s solution was a style of song in which a solo singer declaimed the poetry in a speechlike but essentially
lyrical fashion. This was MONODY. This approach led to a new, rationalist aesthetic for music, following the
model of oratory rather than that of poetry.

1. Seconda Pratica: One of the important factors in the break between the previous and new styles at the
turn of the seventeenth century was their different approaches to dissonance.
In the monodic style, we say, “Goodbye, panconsonance.”
Music is rhetorical, mimetic (a.k.a. imitative)
Dissonance is used rhetorically. Dissonances influence the listener to feel stress in some way.
Gioseffo Zarlino, in treatise Institutione harmoniche, codified the panconsonant treatment of harmony that had
come from the Franco-Netherlands traditions
Zarlino limited dissonances to unaccented passing tones and suspensions.

• Giovanni Maria Artusi

– Delle imperfezioni della moderna musica (1600)
From Monteverdi’s madrigal, “Cruda Amarilli,” Artusi provided examples of
Accented passing tones and neighboring tones
Unprepared dissonances
Escape tones
Appoggiaturas

Remember:
2. Renaissance à Baroque
• Humanist à Rationalist
• Reflect poetic sound, structure and imagery in music à induce powerful affections in listeners
• Poetry/mimesis à rhetoric
• Equal polyphony à homophony/basso continuo

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 • Homogenous timbres à concerted style
• Panconsonance à free use of dissonance

Precursors to opera
• Liturgical dramas
• Intermedi
• Madrigal dialogues and madrigal comedies
1. The First Operas!
• Dafne (1594) MAY have been the first opera. Staged 1598.
• Music by singer/composer Jacopo Peri
• Libretto by poet Ottavio Rinuccini
• Only fragments survive
• In 1600 on occasion of wedding of Maria de’ Medici of Florence to Henry IV of France,
also commemorated in paintings by Rubens
2. The First Operas!
• Euridice (1600)
• Peri (and Caccini): Second teamwork between Peri-Rinuccini
“Caccini, one of the more competitive personalities in music history, joined the operatic movement by managing
to force a few numbers of his own composition into Peri’s Euridice and also brought out a complete setting of the
same libretto”
• Rinuccini the librettist
• Directed by Emilio de’Cavalieri, director who staged the Peri Euridice’s first
performance, can also claim some credit for early development of opera
• First opera to survive intact
• New style: “Stile rappresentativo” (now recitative). The term given by Caccini means abandoning former
lyrical style and adopting a speechlike and declamatory style.
• We remember in Caccini’s Le nuove musiche that he speaks of shortening or lengthening notes to
accommodate the text

3. Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo
• First true opera masterpiece
• Composed in Mantua (1607)
• Monteverdi’s first opera
• Assigns instruments for specific purposes throughout opera: the songs of the shepherds
are accompanied by strings and recorders. Messenger’s news and
• With librettist Alessandro Striggio, Monteverdi adopted the same Greek story Peri had
used in Euridice, but Monteverdi more effectively joined dramatic recitative style with
our need for purely musical interest. Peri’s opera seems to be the model for Monteverdi’s.

Ch 13: Seventeenth-century Instrumental Music

• Fantasia
• Sonata
• Trio texture
• Trio sonata
Sonata = sounded, or played, vs. cantata, sung
Although the ricercar and fantasia continued as thoroughly contrapuntal types, SONATA was the MORE
MODERN type and adopted texture of one or a small number of melodic parts accompanied by basso continuo.
This is commonly called trio texture. A sonata that uses trio texture is a trio sonata.

• Sets of Variations
• Also known as partita

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 • Unity and variation
• Types of variations
• ornamentation of a melody
• borrowing harmonic formulas as in strophic variation songs
• chorale partita
• Simple but effective way to achieve both unity and variety in a musical form
• Partita because comprised many partes
• Variations explored available ways to ornament a given melody
• Lutheran church organists employed a chorale melody as a cantus firmus and other parts wove their series
of variations around the chorale melody
17th-century Instrumental Music
• Dance music
o Binary form: two halves roughly equally long and separated by a strong cadence.
Each half commonly repeated.
o Common organization of the Suite:
• Prelude
• Allemande (slow duple)
• Courante (fast triple)
• Sarabande (very slow triple with 2nd beat emphasis)
• Gigue (fast compound rhythm)

Chapter 14: France and England

8. The musical situation in France in the second half of the seventeenth century differed from that of other
countries and periods.
French prime minister Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) established the idea of the modern nation-state and
centralized the government under the absolute rule of King Louis the 13th who reigned 1610 to 1643.
Louis XIV took the reins of government in 1653 and ruled until 1715! That’s a 62-year rule. His predecessor had
34 years on the throne.
9. Louis XIV strengthened the absolutist monarchy and cultivated a brilliant court life in his new palace at
Versailles. Music had important place at court and was powerfully affected by the new political situation.

10. Court Entertainment in France

• Ballet de cour: comparable with Italian intermedii
Not a stage/ professional production; meant for the courtiers to take part in.
Quasi-dramatic plan with
• Dance
• Instrumental music
• Spoken narrative and dialogue
• Airs and ensemble singing
• Costumes, sets
• Louis XIV: The “Sun King”
Nickname stuck because reflected his glory and the way the French society radiated from the royal court and the
manner in which the nobility revolved around its center.
Ballet exerted powerful influence on development of opera in France. It held the same prestige that opera did in
Italy. We see a considerable amount of dance in French operas.

11. French Opera: Italian operas were brought to France by the Italian Mazarin, prime minister to Louis XIII
• Criticisms of Italian opera, brought by librettist Pierre Perrin
• Too long
• Recits too boring
• Poetry is stilted
• Words unintelligible

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 • Castrati “horrified women and made men snicker.”

12. French Opera

• Académie royale de musique (Librettist Pierre Perrin lost academy to Lully, Italian/Florentine expatriate)
• Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
• Vingt-quatre violons du roi: Lully was a member of the orchestra. He objected to free embellishment and
lack of discipline, so founded his own rival ensemble called Petit violons, 16 then 21 players. Lully
standardized string bowing, etc.

13. Tragédies lyriques the culmination of Lully’s musical style. ‘lyric tragedies’
• Five acts, classical mythological plots
• Lots of dancing (and more chorus than Italian opera)
• NO castrati
• Airs
• derived from airs de cour
• generally simple, syllabic settings (not florid)
• often in binary form
• French overture
• Opening: Slow and stately, homorhythmic, dotted rhythm
• Second section: Fast, light, imitative
• Possible return to opening

14. Music in England

• Masques and incidental theater music
• Cromwell’s Commonwealth (1649-1660) discourages music and theater with Puritan morals.
• The Stuart Restoration brought Charles II to throne in 1660. Music was revived in church and court.
• Secular masques and sacred anthems revived
• Other genres included:
• odes
• welcome songs
• fancies
• Operas hadn’t yet caught on

Music in England
Rarity: an English opera
• Henry Purcell (1659-1695): the leading composer in the last part of the century, born in time for the
Restoration and worked as both a royal and a church musician.
• Dido and Aeneas (1689), written for a girls’ school. Atypical example of what staged
vocal music was like in England at the time. (Masques were more typical)

Lesson 33
Chapter 14, Italy and Germany

1. Italian Opera
• Late-17th century: Italian opera was solidifying by this time (Questions about aria form, how speechlike
recitative should be, were resolved more or less)
• Librettist Apostolo Zeno was instrumental in this regard
• Zeno wrote tight plots
• Zeno sorted serious and comic material into separate scenes
• Opera seria
• Eventually comedy was left out of the genre as Zeno and others were working on
raising the level of literary sophistication of opera seria

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 • Sinfonia: the standard orchestral opening number. We call it “overture” in English; “sinfonia” was the
Italian name.
• Fast-slow-fast: sections of three kinds in contrasting styles and tempos
• Usually the only purely instrumental element in the opera, as dancing declined

• Chains of Recits and Arias

• Recitative: three different styles: Secco, Accompagnato, and Arioso
ARIAS: the main attraction for the audience. They grew increasingly florid and virtuosic.
Because composers were committed to maintaining the governing affect of the music throughout a piece, each
aria normally adopted a particular affective style based on characteristic melodic-rhythmic figures.
• Aria types:
• Rage: characteristic melodic-rhythmic figures might be wide-ranging scales and
arpeggios.
• Example: “Gelosia” from Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in villa
• Heroic aria: likely to employ trumpet-like motives
• Mournful aria: chromatic motion, “sighing” slurs

• Da Capo aria: Our above example, “Gelosia” from Vivaldi’s opera Ottone in villa, is a clear-cut da capo
aria.
• KNOW THIS formal diagram (Pg 210)

2. Age of Singers
• Castrati often took the heroic roles in opera seria. They grew to great physical size and strength and
imposing size and presence without their voices changing into the usual masculine register. The castrati
often took the heroic roles—to the shock or amusement of audiences from other nations. (English visitors
were particularly strong in voicing disgust. But the Italians celebrated the sound of their castrati’s voices.)
• When the music that suited the voices and style of the castrati went out of fashion, their skills were no
longer taught.
• Farinelli a famous castrato. “Farinelli” a stage name; his full name was Carlo Maria
Michelangelo Nicola Broschi

3. Music in Germany
• German composers borrowed styles from France and Italy. The Germans borrowed Italian attitudes about
expressive text setting, Venetian polychoral setting, and basso continuo accompaniment.
• By comparison with Italy, opera in Germany was far less popular.

We have seen Italian influence in the work of a German composer already in the case of Heinrich Schütz.

• Sacred Concerto: example of German music culture shaped by Lutheranism but not by music cultures to
the south in France and Italy. Lutheranism dominated in northern Germany and created unique
circumstances for musical practice.
• Lutheran genres: chorale arrangements, solo pieces, ensembles for several voices with
basso continuo, and the sacred concerto
• The sacred concerto: a sophisticated, multimovement composition
• Major composers
• Dietrich Buxtehude, ca. 1637-1707. Example of a sacred concerto by
Buxtehude:
• Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706)
• Keyboard music
• Remember the Lutheran chorale?
The needs of the Lutheran service led to the cultivation of chorale settings for the organ.
To introduce congregational singing they employed the

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 • chorale prelude, a statement of the chorale melody as a cantus firmus, supported by independent material
devised to produce an affect in keeping with the chorale text. A successful manner of adding independent
material to a chorale tune was with Vorimitation.
• Vorimitation = fore-imitation, or pre-imitation; see Dr. Seaton’s ex.
14.2): Technical procedure. This entails:
Integrating the cantus firmus with the rest of the texture by setting the main
melody in relatively long notes in one line (commonly the soprano or tenor)
and introducing each of its phrases by motives from the chorale presented in
imitative texture in the other parts.

Of course, organists also explored genres that were free (frei.)

Preludes and toccatas were familiar to people since the Renaissance. Preludes (frequently also called fantasias;
these are both improvisatory genres) and toccatas (also free improvisations or compositions meant to sound like
free improvisation) were often paired with fugues.
• Chorale fantasia
• Chorale fugue

Lesson 34
1. Instrumental Developments
Increased interest in music intended for instruments
More idiomatic writing
Vocal music begins to imitate
Instruments developing
Goal in compositions: unity and contrast
Unity: affect in movements
Contrast: scoring and dynamics

2. Fugue
Anticipated by ricercar and fantasia
Establishing techniques
Tonal answer
Episode
Stretto
Pedal point
Example: Bach, Fugue in G minor

3. Suite stems from previous practice of pairing faster and slower dances. In the renaissance we looked at
paired pavan and gaillard.
German suites from about middle of 17th cent, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue became
normative, but wasn’t universal.
Typical order is ACSG. Advantage of this sequence: contrast between adjacent movements and sense of
progression from slower to faster.
Other dances: prelude, bourrée, gavotte, minuet.

One key throughout a suite

*Each dance has a particular Affect: Mattheson gave a list of affects in The complete music director, 1739: affect
of minuet moderate gaiety. Sarabande ambition; gigue: variety of passions from anger to flightiness.
Binary form: All dances unfolded in binary form. Two main parts, each repeated. The first part moved away
from the main key center and cadenced in a related but contrasting key area. The second part began at that point
and cadenced in the opening key again.
SIGNIFICANT: principle of tonal departure and return

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French suites
France had an elaborate tradition of court dances. Exerted a particularly strong influence on the structure and style
of suites throughout Europe. In france the term ordre sometimes substituted for suite.
Ordre
Larger scale. The ordre might incorporate large nos. of mvts.
Sometimes incorporated free pieces that weren’t dances
Titles for movements based on something other than the dance type
Francois Couperin, 1668-1733. Use in text page 218, the figure.
The importance of taste. L’Art de toucher le clavecin, 1717.

Ensemble Sonata
Most important multimovement instrumental genre in Italy
Sonata: any work with contrasting movements, usually for one or more instruments with basso continuo (and later
for keyboard solo)
Sonata da camera (chamber sonata): Italian interpretation of the suite principle. Dance movements put together in
a set, ACSG, perhaps prelude at the beginning.
Sonata da chiesa (church sonata): Not likely to employ dances, but in some cases rhythmic idioms of the dances
are evident, and so are binary forms. Fugal writing is more likely, much more likely, to turn up in the church
sonata than in the chamber sonata.

Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713)

Outstanding sonata composer
Five sets of 12 sonatas
Op 1 and Op 3 = da camera
Op 2 and Op 4 = da chiesa
Op 5 = solo sonatas
Example: Trio Sonata in D minor, Op. 3, no. 5 is a sonata da camera.

Concerto: exploiting concertato principle, adapting sonatas to larger ensembles

Emphasis on contrast: Soloist
vs
Tutti aka Concerto grosso aka Ripieno played harmonically stable passages; the solo went on harmonic
excursions.
Giuseppe Torelli – Ritornello form
Seaton page 222
Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): master of the Italian concerto

Lesson 35
1. Chapter 15: The Early Eighteenth Century
In the third decade of the 18th century, we can identify changes in musical thought (ballad opera, waning
popularity of opera seria)
Yet there was a persisting late Rationalist period. For the most part, these composers didn’t create new genres.
They explored seventeenth-century genres: opera, oratorio, sacred concerto, and cantata; in instrumental music,
fugue, suite, concerto, and sonata.

Be able to give an overview of Handel’s career. Where did he study? Where did he travel? Where did he spend
the end of his career?

Opera Seria
Example from Handel’s Giulio Cesare

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“An opera seria role consists of attitudes struck in reaction to the complicated but conventionalized unfolding of a
moralizing plot. The great opera seria composer was the one who could give the obligatory attitudes a freshly
vivid embodiment and who could convey them essentially without words.” (OAWM)

Note: Operas changed from performance to performance

• Not a fixed “work”

3. Other trends in opera

Ballad opera
Oratorio (Seaton pg 195)
Intermezzo

Telemann’s career as Kantor, church organist, music director, opera house director: how does this compare to J.S.
Bach’s career?

J.S. Bach
Bach’s early career: Arnstadt
Bach’s duties later at the City of Leipzig
Bach’s Culmination of the Stylistic Tradition (Seaton pp. 241-243)

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