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The Beginning of Opera

Despite opera eventually becoming wildly popular, it did not have a solid start.  The pre-opera era consisted of Shakespeare and other artists creating “madrigal comedies.” These madrigal comedies created one of the first links between drama and music.  As the opera evolved over time, it became common knowledge that the overall goal of one was to have it sung the whole way through.  Recitative technique came from this, which made the large amounts of texts more comprehensible.  Despite this, the first few operas, such as Dafne, and Euridice, were not considered wildly successful.  

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Italian Madrigal

The Italian Madrigal was developed in the 1530s and introduced many new concepts to 16th century music. The 14th century madrigal, despite having the same name, has almost no connection to the 16th century madrigal.  The only relation is in the poetry the 16th century madrigal is based on.  In general, they were very popular in the 16th century, with over 2,000 collections containing madrigals published throughout the 16th century.  It introduced many new concepts to repertoire, such as through-composition and more advanced word painting. 

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Renaissance Motet

As the motet became more developed in the Renaissance, they started to be written for multiple purposes. Liturgical motets were used within Mass, Devotional motets were religiously used outside the church, and Occasional motets were for special events. Josquin des Prez, along with many others from his era, included various elements to develop the motet even further.  Josquin made sure to include plainchant in some way shape or form.  There were also new elements introduced, such as word painting.

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Humanism vs. Scholasticism

During the late Medieval era, Scholasticism dominated everyday life. Scholasticism was dependent on receiving information through disputation, and not really relying on dependent thought.  Humanists, however, wanted to learn more about the world they were in.  Instead of just accepting the information they were given, they challenged it, and sought to learn more.  Despite this, they were still incredibly religious, and sought to combine both faith and reason. 

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The Beginning of the Renaissance

Any person that has studied the arts will tell you that the Renaissance was an incredibly important and beautiful time period.  The “rebirth” of these arts were kick started by several interesting factors, including the fall of Constantinople and the decline of the Black Plague.  

Many artists and philosophers of this time looked to the past for inspiration and new ideas, which led to massive shifts in style and ways of thinking.  However, musicians didn’t really have much to look back on.  Because of this, the changes in music were much less drastic, but still significant.  Therefore, we still have a “musical Renaissance.” 

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Highlights of the 14th Century

For studying purposes, I’m going to record some of the key elements from the 14th century.  

The music from this era became self consciously called Ars Nova, which directly translates to “new art.”  The pope actually condemned this new type of music

Phillipe de Vitry wrote a treatise that noted the defining points of the ars nova. Some of these points were

Usage of semiminim and minim

Usage of Duple meter

More remote note values

“Coloration”

Many pieces in this century utilized a technique called “Isorhythm.” Isorhythmic tenors were heavily based on patterns, more so than in previous centuries.  They used both melodic patterns (Color) and rhythmic patterns (Talea) These patterns were usually long and repeated many times over the course of a motet.  

We also see the introduction of the contratenor.  This voice is typically in the same range of the tenor, and is also isorhythmic.

(I’ll probably make a part 2 to this)

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Continuing Beyond Leonin and Perotin

The seemingly rapid development of organum during the 13th is very interesting to me.  Even after the innovations of Notre Dame organum, the music still continued to rapidly.  At some points, it almost looked like modern choir music.  Clausulae is not an independent composition, but rather a brief section of discant organum.  In a motet, new text is added to an existing clausula.  Out of all the developments, the conductus interests me the most.  From what I understand, this is the first type of organum that completely breaks away from it’s religious ties.  In fact, it does not borrow from anything at all, and is entirely original.  Very cool. 

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Leonin and Perotin

I wanna prove that I know about the accomplishments of Leonin and Perotin despite the fact that I stumbled all over my words when I attempted to discuss them in class.  I still stand by my statement that Leonin is that outdated old man of the two and Perotin is the youth challenging all of this outdated ideas.  Though I say this, Leonin is largely credited for the development of Notre Dame organum.  This style of organum was unique, as it focused more on enhancing the soloist portions of a responsorial chant, while leacing the chorus alone.  This was typically done in a two-voice style, which is where Perotin proves himself to be more “hip.” He took the discoveries of Leonin and advanced them even further, adding 3rd and 4th voices to his works.  He also seemed to know how successful his work was going to be, making some of his work up to 11 minutes long. 

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Plainchant Galore

The early stages of plainchant (and music in general) is very cool to me.  It is very interesting to see the way music developed and evolved over time.  As an instrumentalist, it is weird to think about how early instrumentalists were essentially shunned, and that the voice was the purest form of musical expression.  Along those same lines, it is interesting to think about how early church elites feared adding music to their psalms and chants.  In the book, Saint Basil talked about how learning that comes with joy and pleasure is more easily retained.  I think about this exact style of teaching when I think about becoming an educator, and it is so cool to see that this way of thinking was being developed as early as the mid 300s.