#Polyphonic Chant

[haveyouheardthisband]

[zef-zef]

VA - Ethiopie: Polyphonies Et Techniques Vocales (Ocora, 1968)

Songs performed by members of the Dorze, Rashaida, Ghimira, Gidole, Maji, Aderi, Sidamo, Guji, Tigre and Galla Ethiopian ethnic groups.

[bluetapes]

The latest one of our radio show, Music is a form of time-travel, can now be streamed or downloaded from the Blue Tapes Soundcloud. Features polyphonic chant, jazz, modern classical, 70s library music, space disco, noise rock, avant-metal and much more.

[rynliadon]

like fuckk people have literally been peopling for millennia. even in such a restrictive society & with so many musical rules people just want to sing! and create something beautiful!! and push the boundaries of what music is!!! oh my god!!!!

born to be a lesbian nun singing gregorian chant in polyphony, forced to be a music major in the 21st century

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: The Renaissance Period

The Renaissance Period of classical music - spans approximately 1400 to 1600.

It was preceded by the Medieval period and followed by the Baroque period.

The Renaissance era of music history came significantly later than the era of Renaissance art, which arguably peaked during the 14th and 15th centuries, yet the Renaissance music era proved to be equally robust.

This era saw the growth of polyphonic music, the rise of new instruments, and a burst of new ideas regarding harmony, rhythm, and music notation.

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Renaissance music represented a great leap in sophistication from the Medieval era music of the Middle Ages. Key characteristics of Renaissance music include:

Polyphony: While Medieval music is often characterized by homophonic singing (as in Gregorian chants), Renaissance music by composers like Josquin, Palestrina, and Thomas Tallis emphasized multiple voices singing in a polyphonic style. The same was true for multi-part instrumental music.

Tonal music: Most music of the Middle Ages was modal, meaning it followed musical modes as opposed to the major scale or minor scale. In the Renaissance era, this began to change. Some music, particularly vocal music, remained modal in nature, but newer forms like the English madrigal and the Italian madrigal embraced the tonal music that remains popular to this day. Tonal music places strong emphasis on cadences at the end of sections or entire pieces; this way a listener’s ear can be anchored in a particular key.

Increased risk-taking: Early Renaissance music, like that of Guillaume Dufay, maintained the harmonic rules of Medieval music from the late Middle Ages. But as new styles emerged over the course of the sixteenth century, Renaissance music began pushing boundaries and introducing moments of dissonance. Italian and German a cappella music employed a style called musica reservata, featuring notable chromaticism and ornamentation. Meanwhile, musically bold passages by composers like Palestrina would heavily influence early Baroque musicians, such as the Venetian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

A Brief History of Renaissance Music

The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation of the 16th century liberalized some forms of art, and both church music and secular art music thrived during the Renaissance era.

Meanwhile, the 1439 invention of the printing press helped standardize music notation across Europe, although it would continue to evolve during the Baroque era and Classical era.

The Renaissance era itself spans 3 phases:

Early Renaissance: The music of the early Renaissance centered around the Burgundian School, a group of composers led by Guillaume Dufay in northern France and the Low Countries. Early Renaissance music followed closely in the spirit of late Medieval music, but with less syncopation and a greater focus on harmonic cadences. As the early Renaissance period gave way to the middle Renaissance, church composers Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht pushed new boundaries in polyphony in their intricate masses.

Middle Renaissance: The middle Renaissance began around the time that the Catholic church's Council of Trent issued edicts discouraging the use of excessive polyphony in vocal church music. This led to a rollback of techniques used by Obrecht and Ockeghem, but it gave rise to a new generation of Renaissance composers who embraced simpler forms of harmony. The most enduring composers of the middle Renaissance are the Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez and the Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina of the Roman School. Josquin was a master of sacred music, and Palestrina introduced the independent interlocking melody lines we now call counterpoint. At times, however, both Josquin and Palestrina would pay homage to the simple monophonic melodies that defined the Medieval era.

Late Renaissance: The late Renaissance gave way to a style known as mannerism, wherein music was embellished with various forms of ornamentation, suspension, and even chromaticism. This would set the table for the bold, dynamic, heavily embellished music of the Baroque era.

Renaissance Period Musical Forms

The Renaissance period gave rise to musical forms like the motet, the madrigale spirituale, the mass, and the laude, all of which were liturgical styles of music.

Secular music also had a place in the Renaissance era; secular forms included the secular motet and motet-chanson, the secular madrigal, the villancico, the frottola, the rondo, the ballade, the lute song, and the canzonetta.

Instruments of the Renaissance Period

The Renaissance period saw a mix of new musical instruments and holdovers from earlier music. Common Renaissance instruments included:

Harpsichord

Clavichord

Viol

Lute

Rebec

Lyre

Guitar

Recorder

Cornet

Trumpet

Trombone (known at the time as sackbut)

Tambourine

Transverse flute

Influential Renaissance Composers

The musical literature of the Renaissance has not endured to the degree that Baroque, Classical, and Romantic era music has. Still, several Renaissance composers remain highly influential to this day.

Josquin des Prez: Josquin des Prez was a prodigious composer of both church music and secular music. His liturgical motets are widely taught in music schools as examples of Renaissance harmony and notation. He was particularly known in his lifetime for composing 32 religious masses.

Carlo Gesualdo: Better known in his lifetime as Gesualdo da Venosa, this late Renaissance composer was perhaps the most famous of his era to emerge from Italy. He was also notorious for a string of murders he is alleged to have committed. Gesualdo published six volumes of Italian madrigals, which featured chromaticism that would not be equaled until deep into the Baroque era.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: Simply known as Palestrina to most, this Roman School composer is sometimes credited as the link between Renaissance and Baroque music. Palestrina's mastery of counterpoint was among the most robust of his era. Palestrina was known for his masses, such as the Missa Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass), which made him famous in his own lifetime.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[antiquewhim]

the celebration of Žolinė in Lithuania

Yesterday on August 15 was Žolinė, so here's a little infodump about it (minus the church-related traditions, I'm not as familiar with them).

Žolinė, otherwise known as Assumption of Mary, is a national holiday in Lithuania. It is observed as a Catholic celebration today, however, I will focus on its non-Christian related traditions which characterise it as a celebration of the harvest, to which gratitude and generosity were central.

Although the beliefs of Baltic Paganism were constantly shifting, unorganised region-to-region and not very well recorded, we can claim that the goddess of Earth and plants Žemyna (or perhaps her possible predecessor Lada) played a major role in this holiday before Catholicism made its way into the mainstream, or at least borrowed elements from a separate holiday which was for her.

Ethnologist Gražina Kadžytė points out some of the key motifs for this celebration in folk polyphonic chants, such as the ritual importance of feasts due to plentitude of food after a successful harvest, the flourishing of nature as well as its connection to afterlife (it is important to note that according to folklore the spirits of the dead accompany Lithuanians to major holidays or even everyday as birds or, more commonly, bees).

The meaning of the word Žolinė (roughly 'grass holiday') betrays one of its traditions that has been incorporated with Christianity, that being the blessing of wildflowers and field grasses, along with vegetables and grain in some regions.

Some other traditions include brewing beer and baking bread from the fresh harvest, young women making 9 wreaths out of different plants which would then be used for incense, medicinal tea or additions to other wreaths, such as the one made after building a house. It was also important to create elaborate grasses’ bouquets, a case could be made for them being depictions of the tree of life as both share the same name of Jievaras, signifying the diversity of the universe through the variety of flora used.

But that is it from me! I definitely don't know every single thing, so you are welcome to add.

[dkniade]

I was looking at Yun Jin’s and Furina’s TCG Chinese card captions

-

Yun Jin

“红毹婵娟，庄谐并举。”

(Hóng shū chánjuān, zhuāng xié bìngjǔ.)

“The (carpeted) stage’s beautiful actress, able to play both comic and tragic roles” (?)

…“Elegance on the carpeted stage, both comedic and tragic”?

Official English (alas): “Elegance on the stage, in decorous harmony.”

-

红毹 (hóng shū) —> (红 = red ) + 氍毹 (qú shū), type of patterned wool cloth/carpet, traditional Chinese theatre is often performed on carpets, thus 氍毹 or 红氍毹 often means “stage” (zdic)

Ohh!! I didn’t know that. Carpet on the stage…

“本义指古代西域进口的一种编织毯，后来引申为各种地毯挂毯床毯等，到了明朝，开始专指戏曲舞台。明朝是昆曲盛行的时代，演出时例必要在舞台铺上红地毯，是为“红氍毹”，渐渐地就成了戏曲舞台的代称。如此这个词儿基本不再用于口语，但是书面文章中仍然常见它的踪迹” (Guo Cui Jing Ju)—> basically, it originally referred to weaved carpet, then various carpets and tapestries. Until the Ming dynasty, where Kunqu opera gained popularity and there were always red carpets on the stage when performing, thus 红氍毹 became synonymous with theatric stage. (More literary than everyday usage though)

(Kind of similar to curtains associated with the western stage?)

婵娟 (chánjuān) —> literary term for a beautiful woman. Term appears in Su Shi’s 宋词 (Song ci, Song dynasty poetry) “水调歌头” (Shuǐ Diào Gē Tóu), “但愿人长久，千里共婵娟” but it likely refers to the moon in the line’s second half which talks about about sharing (the sight of?) a beautiful moon when miles apart

庄谐 (zhuāng xié) —> 庄 = serious; 谐 = humorous, lighthearted. Possibly comedy and tragedy?

并举 (bìngjǔ) —> develop simultaneously

-

Furina

“永世领唱，无���圆舞。”

(Yǒngshì lǐngchàng, wújìn yuán wǔ.)

“Eternal lead singer, endless waltz”?

…“Perpetual prima donna, endless waltz”?

“Perpetual lead singer, endless waltz”?

Official English: “Perpetual muse of chansons and rondeaux.”

永世: “to/until [one’s] dying day” (Cambridge Dictionary)

“forever” (CollinsDictionary), eternal (Cambridge Dictionary)

领唱: the lead singer or soloist in a choir, or the act of leading a chorus (Baidu Baike)

but 领唱 also refers to cantor (in liturgical music and prayer, generally refers to the lead singer in a Jewish congregation but it also applies to Christian contexts too…? Feel free to correct me)

Oh, according to MyJewishLearning, “A cantor — hazzan (חזן) in Hebrew — is the person who chants worship services in the synagogue. Though the word is sometimes applied in a general way to anyone who leads services, it is more commonly used to denote someone who has completed professional musical training and been ordained as a cantor.”

Chinese term found in an English definition of cantor. (Cambridge Dictionary)

an English definition of cantor. (Merriam Webster)

Conversely, maybe 领唱 is HoYoverse’s way of saying “prima donna” which the Cambridge dictionary defines as “the most important female singer in an opera company” (a description fitting Furina)

prima donna is 首席女歌手 in Chinese (Cambridge) but its five characters wouldn’t fit the TCG’s eight-character restriction if the first part should only use four characters total…

chanson: “various eras of French song, from the monophonic chant of the Middle Ages to the polyphonic singing of the Renaissance. Modern chanson music connects nineteenth-century cabaret music in Paris to contemporary pop music” (MasterClass)

(In French “chanson” means song but as a borrowed word in English, the Chinese term for it is 香頌)(from Chinese article talking about French chanson on Gmw.cn)

rondeaux (plural), rondeau (singular): three-stanza poem of French origin, mainly octosyllabic, 10-15 lines (Poetry Foundation). (Chinese term: 回旋诗. From the online French-to Chinese dictionary frdic)

…where’s the 圆舞 part…? Why change the dance imagery to another poetic form when dance is one of Furina’s motifs?

圆舞曲: music written for a waltz and the dance itself

华尔兹: waltz, the music specifically. (Baidu Baike)

Meaning, the one in Furina’s card likely refers to a dance? (considering they took out the 曲 character which does mean “song”)

[kenotype]

The focus here is on music that could've only been articulated by a monophonic texture in order to convey its compositional principles specific to the texture as a fundamental systematic criterion. In other words, the music does not use monophony as merely a 'piece' of that which can be found elsewhere within one's oeuvre systemically articulated polyphonically, homophonically, or heterophonically.

It's not an accident that most monophonic music included here is primarily for the electronic or vocal medium (what we now call monophony was initially called cantus, cf. Haug (2015)). Much contemporary electronic music is richly multi-timbral and polyphonic, but initially was not, due to technical limitations (Warner 2017). I suspect or conjecture or whatever that the motivations for the electronic medium to 'develop' beyond monophonic output were primarily ideological, i.e. musicological, and indicative of a myopic perceptual bias via the concurrent 'listening culture' (Lissa, Tanska, Tarska 1965). What if the output 'restrictions' of Mathews' MUSIC I or Moog's Model IIIc were maintained in the ensuing development of real-time software or more sophisticated SMT analog circuit topologies? What implications would that've had for compositional developments? Historical definitions of monophony throughout the literature are consistently coupled with references to primitive cultures and most post-medieval monophonic music is relegated to various 'studies', 'etudes', 'examples', 'student recital pieces', and so on (Randel 2003). Furthermore, monophonic music is commonly used as data for MIR research, for it meets the local optimum of feature parsability or whatever. I also suspect, much more speculatively, that monophony being basically synonymous with the so-called primitive, preliminary, or simple is indicative of a cognitivist bias that auditory streams are initially perceived as single and integrated and subsequently 'build up' in perceptual complexity as segregable and multistable, constructing a sufficient auditory scene (Deike et al. 2012).

Ainu, Hokkaido Island (Yoshi Shikato), Yukar Cathy Berberian, Stripsody John Cage, Solo For Voice 67 Sean Colum, 1-channel dynamic stochastic synthesis composite for Love Und Romance Vindictive New Town Shoplifting So Tough Instant Hit FM EVOL, Persisting Pinkness (Excerpt) Pietro Grossi, Monodia (Excerpt) Russell Haswell, Kinetic Scotch Tape (Excerpt) Hecker, IV Tom Johnson, Music With Mistakes (Excerpt) Lola Kiepja, Shamanic Chant No. 3 (Excerpt) Luciano Maggiore, Drenched Thatched Roof (Excerpt) Greta Monach, Fonergon 07-1 (Excerpt) Tom Mudd, Pile Up Part 1 One Hand Clapping, Relatively Healthy J.K. Randall, Quartersines James Tenney, Seegersong #2 (Excerpt) Iannis Xenakis, Mikka

Deike, S., et al. (2012). The build-up of auditory stream segregation: a different perspective. Frontiers in psychology, 3, 461. Haug, A. (2015). Reconstructing Western “Monophonic” Music. In Writing the History of" Ottoman Music" (pp. 231-240). Ergon-Verlag. Lippus, Urve. (1995). Linear Musical Thinking. A Theory of Musical Thinking and the Runic Song Tradition of Baltic-Finnish Peoples. Studia musicologica Universitatis Helsingiensis VII, Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Lissa, Z., Tanska, E., & Tarska, E. (1965). On the evolution of musical perception. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 24(2), 273-286. Randel, D. M. (Ed.). (2003). The Harvard dictionary of music. Harvard University Press. Warner, D. (2017). Live Wires: A history of electronic music. Reaktion Books. Wiśniewski, P. (2018). Liturgical Monody as a Subject of Musicological Research–an Attempt at a Synthesis. Seminare. Poszukiwania naukowe, 39(4), 207-220. - Kieran Daly

[theridgebeyond]

For the ask tag, 5 and 7!

5. When do you feel closest to your deity/ies?

When I'm sitting in Adoration or spending mindful time outdoors. Oftentimes for me, God feels like he's in another room -- close enough to hear God's footsteps, but still separated. I used to worry what I had done wrong/what was wrong with me, but I've made my peace with my occasional glimpses of God's presence.

7. If you could change one thing about your faith community, what would it be?

Honestly? About the physical community I worship with each week? We don't chant enough. Even during the traditional service there's barely any plainsong (common chant with a single melody, similar to polyphonic Gregorian chant), even though the Psalms and the Lord's Prayer have plainsong versions in the ELCA hymnal. When I first visited a Benedictine monastery and had the chance to chant the psalms with the nuns there, it was truly an awakening.

I've since begun incorporating plainsong into my practice, although I only know one melody from Call the Midwife lol.

[zef-zef]

VA - Pêcheurs De Perles Et Musiciens Du Golfe Persique (Ocora, 1968)

Recorded By Poul Rovsing Olsen

[winwin17]

Mogtober 2023 Day #18

Prompt: Jupiter North

(Quick summary: To all appearances, Jupiter has a lot of confidence, but he tends to feel differently when he looks at himself with his Witness ability, until one day Frank inspires a deep lesson.)

Jupiter North hated the mirror.

Well, that wasn't *exactly* accurate.

It was more of a love-hate relationship, but on many days, the hate was very predominant.

Such was the case on one particular day when he found himself lost in thought, wandering down a hall in the Deucalion toward his office. Halfway there, he happened to catch sight of himself in a hallway mirror.

What he saw made him stop.

His general appearance was about enough to make anybody stop on any given day, what with his bright ginger hair, flashy wardrobe choices, and all around handsome features. But for himself as a Witness, there was always so much more.

Jupiter gazed at his reflection with a perceptive eye that saw far more than the average person ever could. With regards to himself, it was a criticizing eye, most of the time. He had learned to tune it out a lot, just like how he filtered what he saw anywhere else in the world in order to maintain not only respect for other people's boundaries, but also his own sanity. But sometimes he just couldn't ignore it all.

Today was one of those days.

Standing before the mirror, he cringed as he took note of the sizeable gray cloud that was hovering around him. Stress, discouragement, and worries - that's what that represented. Jupiter was generally a pretty positive person, but lately he'd been carrying a lot of concerns for Morrigan, and how to figure out what was going on with the disappearance of the Hollowpox, and how to keep Squall from getting into his little girl's head. Well, not *his* little girl, technically, but close enough. Enough that the concern Jupiter carried for her expressed itself through the Gossamer in a bigger, denser gray cloud than Jupiter typically saw with average levels of stress.

In addition to the gray cloud, there was also that flickering light around his head, blinking in and out, suggesting an unsolved mystery, questions with answers just out of reach. Jupiter had an inquisitive mind and always seemed to be on the trail of some mystery or another. So this wasn't an unfamiliar sight, but it was a constant reminder of multiple pressing concerns. Sometimes he couldn't tell if he was chasing the questions or if they were chasing him.

Beneath the obvious, glaring layers of stress and discouragement, Jupiter could see some of his own older battles. Over his heart was one particular scar, old, but still bleeding a bit. That was from the death of his sister and the way he still carried some guilt for feeling like he should have been able to prevent it somehow. Very close to it was another old wound, mostly healed by now, that represented how he hurt for Jack without parents in the world to guide and support him. It was connected to a vague shape like weights on his chest. That was the responsibility he felt for giving Jack a better world now.

Jupiter sighed deeply as his eyes followed the innumerable strings of multiple colors and textures that tied his person and his heart to one thing or another, mostly life events and happenings, a few to people. In them he could read just about every moment of his history. All the joys and happiness, yes, but also all the pain, the losses, the sad times. Even more than that, he could see all his personal flaws and shortcomings and guilt for every instance he felt he had not been or done enough. These dark, dreary smudges tended to overpower the marks of good things, laughing at him, mocking him.

"You're not enough, you're not enough, you're not enough," they chanted. They repeated over and over until they filled his head with their echoes, like the complex layers of some polyphonic music. He could almost feel the ambiguous shadows that leered over his shoulders.

Along with this was a dread as black as the blackest night, surrounding his heart like the cold waves of a threatening ocean. Sometimes their tide was low, sometimes it was high, but it always existed in some measure. Jupiter knew he was seeing the fear of failing Mog. It was the dread of making one wrong move and letting her be torn away by Squall or overcome by the voices of her past that said she was cursed - or worst of all, of himself somehow accidentally letting her down and losing her trust. Jupiter shuddered at the slightest notion of it.

Here and there and everywhere, he was marked with scars and shadows and shatters of various shapes and size. How could he ignore them? Why did he ever look in the mirror anyway, when these constant reminders of who he was always glared at him from his reflection?

"Admiring yourself, Jove?" a voice came from behind him.

"Hm?"

Jupiter was suddenly pulled out of his deep thoughts. He hadn't noticed Frank approaching him.

"Oh, no, never," Jupiter answered, mustering up the smirk and playful, half sarcastic tone that almost always threw others off the trail of his true thoughts in these cases. "Why would I do that?"

"Oh, only because of the half million wonderful things that make you Captain Jupiter North," Frank shrugged. "Ask anyone. What's not to admire?"

The vampire dwarf gave Jupiter's arm a friendly bump and meandered on his blissfully ignorant way, but his words turned Jupiter back to the mirror again.

"What's not to admire?" he'd said. "Half a million wonderful things."

Jupiter squinted at himself. He was so used to seeing his flaws and his burdens, so used to both examining them and yet also ignoring them, that he rarely took much note of his positive traits. But now that he thought about it, what was there?

Determination - there was that - like the constant beating of a heart that just wouldn't give up. Values that had an appearance similar to beautiful plants with roots that buried themselves in the deepest part of his core. Intelligence and an inquisitive nature that looked sort of like the flashing lights of unanswered questions, but were more of a constant glow around his head, almost halo-like. Similarly, the radiance of a positive and caring nature shone in the center of his chest near the sternum, much like the constant candle of kindness Dame Chanda carried within herself. And a consistent life purpose, made greater than ever by the new addition of his investment in Morrigan.

Right then, something shifted, not so much in Jupiter's actual sight as his perspective, and suddenly he saw a person alive and aglow with a beauty and value that went much deeper than gorgeous hair or fine clothes.

Why did he not remember ever seeing himself like this? It had all been there. He'd even seen it before - only he hadn't *seen* it. Even as a person who was generally self aware and had a measure of value for his own positive traits, he'd somehow always felt that it was just strange to look at his own good qualities with that level of scrutiny. Besides, the weight of all his cares and concerns had so long overclouded them that he must've unconsciously trained himself only to see his person as an amalgamation of all his scars and battles and shortcomings.

He was all of that, yes, but he was so many good things, too. So many smiles and happy moments like warm little nooks in his heart to sustain him through the winters of his lapses into harsh self judgement. Brightly colored strings tying him to wonderful experiences, beautiful places, and the best of people.

And running through all of it was a massive tide of love, surging and pulsing and coursing through positively everything. There was love for Jack, love for his Wunsoc unit, love for even the family and friends who were long gone like his sister. There was love for Fen and Frank and Dame Chanda and the whole Deucalion family. There was love, newer and perhaps greater than any of the others, for Mog, sparkling with the bright hue of newfound purpose.

The river of love was so great it was impossible to tell where it began or ended, and it flowed out into so many different branches in multiple directions. But it didn't just give; the love of other people was constantly splashing into the tide that sourced from his own heart, too.

Jupiter could hardly tear his eyes away from the mirror now. This change of perspective was so overwhelming. It wasn't until he heard footsteps behind him that he looked away from the sight.

Turning to see who was approaching, Jupiter was met with the familiar black eye-patched face of his nephew.

Jack started to open his mouth as if to start a conversation, but seemed to catch something, and closed it immediately. Jupiter didn't need his Witness ability to watch Jack take in the sight of his uncle in such deep thoughts in front of the mirror and make the connection of what was going on. No words were spoken, but they made brief eye contact and something unspoken passed between them. Jack's eyes reflected a sense of recognition, and he gave a simple, understanding nod before continuing on his way again. But that confirmed to Jupiter what he'd really always known. Jack knew. He got it. He did this, too.

"Jack," Jupiter called the boy back. "There's something important I need to tell you."

He put his hands on Jack's shoulders and turned him to face the mirror.

"I want you to remember, whenever you look at yourself in the mirror - with or without your eye patch, but especially without - to always try to see yourself as a whole. It will save you a lot of trouble."

Jack nodded, silent for a moment, until Jupiter released his shoulders, then said, "Thanks. I'll try to remember that."

"Well," Jupiter said at last, reaching out to make a quick adjustment to Jacks collar. "I've got things to do now. But remember, Jack: the mirror is not your enemy."

[molyholytm]

i always see people talking about "oh i listen to everything" and then they really don't. yea ok i'm ACTUALLY trying to get into this whole "listening to everything" thing and well. let's just say i'm listening to bulgarian polyphonic chanting and let me also say, the capabilities of simply a group of human voices is genuinely incredible. i am amazed by this i love this.

Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares is the album for those interested which, please listen to this it's so cool

[officiallordvetinari]

Two cool practices I learned about today:

Artists in Vanuatu draw these intricate shapes in the sand to tell a story using one continuous line on a grid

Women in rural Burundi greet each other with call-and-response polyphonic chants that last several minutes

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Classical Music Eras

Classical Music - describes orchestral music, chamber music, choral music, and solo performance pieces, yet within this broad genre, several distinct periods exist. Each classical era has its own characteristics that distinguish it from classical music at large.

Eras of Classical Music

Musicologists divide classical music into historical eras and stylistic subgenres. One way to examine classical music history is to divide it into 7 periods:

Medieval period (1150 to 1400): Music has existed since the dawn of human civilization, but most music historians begin cataloging classical music in the Medieval era. Medieval music is known for monophonic chant—sometimes called Gregorian chant due to its use by Gregorian monks. In addition to singing, Medieval musicians played instrumental music on instruments like the lute, the flute, the recorder, and select string instruments.

Renaissance period (1400 to 1600): Renaissance-era music introduced polyphonic music to wide audiences, particularly via choral music, which was performed in liturgical settings. In addition to the lute, Renaissance musicians played viol, rebec, lyre, and guitar among other string instruments. Brass instruments like the sackbut and cornet also emerged during this era. Perhaps the most notable Renaissance composers were Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, John Dowland, and Thomas Tallis.

Baroque period (1600 to 1750): During the Baroque era, classical music surged forward in its complexity. The Baroque era saw a full embrace of tonal music—music based on major scales and minor scales rather than modes—and it maintained the polyphony of the Renaissance era. Many of the instruments used by today's orchestras were common in Baroque music, including violin, viola, cello, contrabass (double bass), bassoon, and oboe. Harpsichord was the dominant keyboard instrument, although the piano first emerged during this era. The most renowned composers of the early Baroque era include Alessandro Scarlatti and Henry Purcell. By the late Baroque period, composers like Antonio Vivaldi, Dominico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel, and Georg Philipp Telemann achieved massive popularity. The most influential composer to come from the Baroque era is Johann Sebastian Bach, who composed extensive preludes, fugues, cantatas, and organ music.

Classical period (1750 to 1820): Within the broad genre of classical music exists the Classical period. This era of music marked the first time that the symphony, the instrumental concerto (which highlights virtuoso soloists), and the sonata form were brought to wide audiences. Chamber music for trio and string quartet was also popular during the Classical era. The signature classical composer is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, although he was far from the only star of the classical era. Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, and J.S. Bach's sons J.C. Bach and C.P.E. Bach were also star composers during this period. Opera composers like Mozart and Christoph Willibald Gluck developed the operatic form into a style that remains recognizable today. Ludwig van Beethoven began his career during the Classical era, but his own innovations helped usher in the next musical era.

Romantic period (1820 to 1900): Exemplified by late-period Beethoven, the Romantic era introduced emotion and drama to the platonic beauty of Classical period music. Early Romantic works like Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 set a template for nearly all nineteenth-century music that followed. Many of the composers who dominate today's symphonic repertoires composed during the Romantic era, including Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Opera composers like Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini used Romanticism's emotional power to create beautiful melodic lines sung in Italian and German. The Romantic era also saw the creation of a new instrument in the woodwind family, the saxophone, which would gain special prominence in the century to come.

Modern period (1900 to 1930): The Modern era of art and music came about in the early twentieth century. Classical composers of the early twentieth century reveled in breaking the harmonic and structural rules that had governed previous forms of classical music. Igor Stravinsky defiantly stretched instruments to their natural limits, embraced mixed meter, and challenged traditional notions of tonality in works like The Rite of Spring. French composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel led a subgenre of twentieth-century music called Impressionism. Others like Dimitri Shostakovich, Paul Hindemith, and Béla Bartók stuck with classical forms like the piano concerto and the sonata, but challenged harmonic traditions. Perhaps most radical was the German composer Arnold Schoenberg who, along with disciples like Alban Berg and Anton Webern, disposed of tonality altogether and embraced serial (or 12-tone) music.

Postmodern period (1930 to today): The art music of the twentieth century shifted starting in the 1930s and continuing into the post-World War II era, ushering in a style of music that is sometimes called postmodern or contemporary. Early purveyors of postmodern music include Olivier Messiaen, who combined classical forms with new instruments like the ondes martenot. Postmodern and contemporary composers like Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Górecki, György Ligeti, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, and Christopher Rouse have blended the lines between tonal and atonal music, and they’ve blurred the lines between classical music and other forms like rock and jazz.

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[sheepy-lloyd-dylan-claridge]

One more syllable

oh poets! lets chant our verse like singing birds !

where every syllabic expression has a lute-like timbre

oh my poetry is my lute .

For I've forsaken the real lute .

I see syllables as polyphonic , --shooting in rainbow glimmerings

I see poetry shaping and building undercurrents of nations

--artistic backdrop rocks

The so called Bach-sediment of peoples poetic inspirations

chiming and clanging to some purposeful avail

writing poetry, to shine ebbing light

to paint as water-colours attempted virtue and beauty.

a mission of questioned vanity and insanity , yet purposeful currents from God, send onward comfort,

to chant just one more syllable...

[fordcrownvictoria]

A Heart Laid Bare: Reflecting on Vide Cor Meum

Among the most hauntingly beautiful compositions ever crafted for cinema, Vide Cor Meum stands apart as a musical prayer—tender, divine, and devastating. Written by Irish composer Patrick Cassidy and produced by Hans Zimmer for Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001), the piece takes inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova, fusing medieval poetry with cinematic grandeur. But beneath its cinematic function lies a carefully constructed tapestry of music theory, ancient text, and personal resonance that elevates it from soundtrack to sanctum.

I. The Architecture of Emotion: Technical Dissection

At a glance, Vide Cor Meum may appear as a modest vocal piece, but its internal complexity reveals a masterwork of tonal ambiguity, modal shifts, and layered counterpoint that enhances its emotional resonance.

The piece is set primarily in E minor, but Cassidy plays with modal interchange throughout, especially drawing from the Dorian and Aeolian modes. The use of Dorian—a scale that raises the sixth degree of the natural minor—lends the piece a bittersweet quality, avoiding the full despair of minor tonality while still remaining introspective. At several points, the harmony lingers on a C major chord (VI), subtly coloring the E minor landscape with warmth and hope, rather than resignation.

Rhythmically, the piece employs a slow 6/8 meter, which gives it a lilting, almost lullaby-like quality. The rhythmic subdivisions create a natural swing between two beats per measure, contributing to the sense of floating or swaying. This metrical softness plays into the spiritual tone of the piece, mimicking the cadence of gentle breath or whispered prayer.

The string section plays a critical role in grounding the harmonic structure. Cassidy utilizes sustained pedal tones—especially on E and B—to create harmonic tension and release. The harmonic rhythm (the rate at which chords change) is deliberately slow, often holding a single chord for multiple measures, which enhances the meditative quality and allows space for vocal ornamentation.

Melodically, the soprano and tenor voices operate both in parallel motion and contrapuntal independence. The soprano often ascends in stepwise motion, with ornamentation reminiscent of early liturgical chant, while the tenor provides a more grounded, narrative tone. The interaction of their lines is carefully structured: there are moments of imitation, staggered entrances, and voice crossing, all of which add to the layered texture. These polyphonic techniques are rooted in Renaissance vocal traditions, subtly alluding to the era of Dante himself.

The harmonic language is rich in suspensions, where dissonant intervals are resolved downward stepwise to consonances. For example, a recurring suspension is the 4-3 suspension over the dominant, which delays harmonic resolution and evokes a yearning quality. Cassidy’s choice to frequently delay cadential resolution (especially the authentic cadence, V–I) enhances the tension and makes each arrival feel profound.

The piece does not follow a traditional strophic or ternary form. Instead, it unfolds organically, like a meditation. There are identifiable thematic sections, but they are linked by transitional material and text painting—a technique where the music mirrors the content of the text. For example, during the line "in suo colore" (in her color), the music briefly modulates to a warmer harmonic area, subtly reflecting the radiance Dante experiences in his vision.

The sparing use of harp and celesta adds a glimmering, ethereal texture. These instruments often enter to underline key moments of emotional or textual significance, almost as if the music itself is inhaling light. The dynamic shaping—with long crescendos and decrescendos—further contributes to the sense of breathing, making the entire piece feel alive and sentient.

In essence, Cassidy has written a piece that is neither purely classical, nor cinematic, nor sacred, but a sublime fusion of all three—anchored by modality, liberated by counterpoint, and lifted by breath.

II. A Scene in Shadow: Discovering Vide Cor Meum

I first encountered Vide Cor Meum during a late-night viewing of Hannibal. The film is an operatic thriller in itself, but nestled in one of its quietest, most unsuspecting moments was a musical performance staged in Florence—Dr. Hannibal Lecter seated in the shadows, Clarice Starling listening from afar. The music began: delicate, slow, as though inhaling eternity before it spoke. And when it did, something in me faltered. I had not expected such beauty—disarming, tender, almost too sincere for a movie soaked in psychological terror.

It was not terror I felt, though, but recognition. A feeling that I had wandered into a sacred space. I watched the rest of the film through a different lens after that—Vide Cor Meum had changed something, carved a secret alcove in my memory where it would live, whispering.

III. “Behold My Heart”: Romantic Resonance

The lyrics of Vide Cor Meum are drawn from a vision described in Dante’s La Vita Nuova, where the poet dreams of Love holding his heart and feeding it to Beatrice. "Vide cor meum" means “See my heart”—a phrase as raw as it is reverent. It is not merely a confession of love, but an act of transfiguration: the self becomes sacrament, offered freely and without condition.

What moves me most is the vulnerability in that offering. Love, in Dante’s rendering and in Cassidy’s music, is not conquest but surrender. The act of opening one’s chest, of saying “this is everything I am—my pain, my devotion, my hope—take it,” is both terrifying and beautiful. When the soprano echoes the final line—"cor tuum"—we understand that the speaker’s heart is not just exposed but mirrored in the beloved. That mutual recognition is the essence of romantic love: not just being seen, but being seen truly.

This emotional sincerity is amplified by the music’s restraint. Cassidy does not manipulate us with sentimentality; instead, he invites us to witness something private. The intimacy of the music becomes a window into Dante’s inner sanctum—and, perhaps, into our own.

IV. Echoes After the Final Note: The Legacy

Vide Cor Meum has outlived its film. While Hannibal remains a controversial, baroque exploration of ethics and aesthetics, the aria has slipped past the boundaries of genre, reappearing in concerts, funerals, and even weddings. It has become a secular hymn, beloved by people who may never know Dante or care for Lecter.

That it transcends its origins speaks to its purity. It does not demand context to move you—it only asks for your stillness. In a world often fractured by noise, irony, and haste, Vide Cor Meum invites us to pause and feel. Not just listen, but feel.

And perhaps that is its truest legacy: a quiet testament to the enduring power of love—not the triumphant, cinematic kind, but the sacred, trembling act of giving oneself away. Of saying, Vide cor meum, and meaning every word.