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Early Music >> Content Detail



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Readings

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Required Texts


Amazon logo Wright, Craig, and Bryan R. Simms. "Antiquity through the Baroque." In Music in Western Civilization. Vol. 1. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Schirmer, 2006. ISBN: 9780495008651.

Amazon logo Roden, Timothy J., Craig Wright, and Bryan R. Simms. "Antiquity through the Renaissance." In Anthology for Music in Western Civilization. Vol. A. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Schirmer, 2006. ISBN: 9780495008798. [Book and CD]

Amazon logo Weiss, Piero, and Richard Taruskin. Music in the Western World: A History in Documents. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 1984. ISBN: 9780028729008.



Other References


Amazon logo Barker, Andrew, ed. Greek Musical Writings. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780521235938.

Amazon logo Christensen, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780521623711.

Amazon logo Ledger, Philip, ed. Oxford Book of English Madrigals. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN: 9780193436640.



Readings by Session



SES #TOPICSREADINGS
Unit 1: Introduction, chant, and medieval music
1

Introduction

Music in the medieval western church

Cycles of the day and of the year

Form of the mass and of the office

2

Preamble: Music in the Greek and Roman world

Mode and chant

Types of chants

Reading modern chant notation

Practice singing the office of sext

Wright and Simms, pp. 0-28, esp. 6-7, 14-15, and 18-24.

Weiss and Taruskin. Plato, "Plato's Musical Idealism," pp. 6-10.

3

Types of chants (cont.)

Office review

Chant manuscripts and notation

Syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic chants

Hexachords and the Guidonian hand

Wright and Simms, pp. 28-34.
4

Non-Gregorian chant

Modern chant books

Innovation in the chant repertoire (sequences, tropes)

Liturgical drama and the compositions of Hildegard of Bingham

Other chant traditions in the west and elsewhere

The unending tradition of chant

Wright and Simms, p. 34.
Bridge 1: From chant to 1315
5

Secular monophony in the middle ages

Troubadours and trouvères

Court life in the later middle ages

Discussion of previous assignment

Polyphony before the Magnus Liber

Theoretical sources and prehistory

Musica Enchiriadis

Earliest practical sources

Conductus

Wright and Simms, pp. 41-52.
6

Polyphony in Paris (Notre Dame) and in the early 13th century

Anonymous IV

Leonin and Perotin

Organum and Discant

Modal rhythm

Ars antiqua motet: Introduction

Wright and Simms, pp. 52-70.

7

Music in the 13th and early 14th century

Motets become secular

Ars antiqua manuscripts

Instrumental music: Danses reals

Roman de Fauvel

Philippe de Vitry

Isorhythm and hocket



Listening quiz 1


Wright and Simms, chapters 10-11.
Unit 2: Music in the (mainly Italian) fourteenth century
8

Guillaume de Machaut and music in France before 1370

Machaut, poet and musician

Formes fixes

Motets and mass

Reims vs. court life

Machaut and the Gesamtausgabe

Wright and Simms, chapter 12.
9

Trecento music 1

Discussion and performance of Se per dureça

Principles of Italian notation

Jacopo da Bologna and the madrigal

Francesco and the ballata

Wright and Simms:

"Musical Interlude 1: From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Performance," pp. 95-101.

Chapter 14, pp. 102-110.

Amazon logo Long, Michael. "Trecento Italy." In Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Edited by James McKinnon. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991, pp. 241-268. ISBN: 9780130361615.

10

Trecento music 2: New trends in our knowledge of Italian music

Squarcialupi codex

Other sources

Zachara da Teramo and the Parody mass

Johannes Ciconia and the Motet

11

Simplicity and complexity

Keyboard music

Cantus Planus Binatim

Ars Subtilior

Wright and Simms, chapter 13, pp. 89-95.

Amazon logo Gallo, F. Alberto. "The Practice of cantus planus binatim in Italy From the Beginning of the 14th to the Beginning of the 16th Century." In Le Polifonie primitive in Friuli e in Europa. Atti del congresso internazionale Cividale del Friuli, 22-24 agosto 1980. Edited by Cesare Corsi and Pierluigi Petrobelli. Rome, Italy: Torre d'Orfeo, 1989, pp. 13-30. ISBN: 9788885147201. (Skim)

Cuthbert, Michael Scott. "Counting our losses." From Trecento Fragments. PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2006. (PDF) (Skim)
[The full dissertation is at Trecento Fragments and Polyphony Beyond the Codex]

Exam 1
Bridge 2: The continental renaissance
12

The Renaissance and music 1420-1460

Guillaume Du Fay and his contemporaries

The English sound

Fauxbourdon

Motets and cyclic masses

Ockeghem and the canon

Wright and Simms:

Chapter 15, "Music in Renaissance Florence" (cf. Craig Wright's work on Nuper rosarum flores), pp. 110-115.

Chapter 16, "English Music," "Fauxbourdon," pp. 118-119, and "Dunstaple," pp. 121-123.

Chapter 17, "Music in Burgundy" (on Du Fay and Binchois), pp. 123-131.

Chapter 18, "Ockeghem," pp. 132-135.

13

Vocal music: Josquin, his contemporaries, and his followers

Patronage

Documents and manuscripts

Josquin and his (or someone else's?) innovations; "Ave Maria"

"The pervasive myth of pervasive imitation"

Wright and Simms:

Chapter 19, "Jacob Obrecht and the Multiple Cantus Firmus Mass."

Chapter 21, "Josquin des Prez and Music in Ferrara."

Chapter 20, "Popular Music in Florence 1475-1540," "The Carnival Song and the Lauda," and "The Frottola."

14

Other innovations in continental music, 1460-1550

Palestrina and Lasso

Dance and keyboard music

Instrumental forms

French song

Protestantism and music

Wright and Simms:

"Musical Instruments," and "The Basse Danse," pp. 142-144.

Chapters 22-24, pp 168-202. (186-190 are optional)

Chapter 25, "Rome and Music of the Counter-Reformation."

Unit 3: Elizabethan London
15

From Dunstaple to Elizabeth: Tudor England

The Elizabethan Madrigal (Weelkes, Gibbons, etc.) and its Italian predecessors

Music printing

Wright and Simms:

Chapter 20, "The Early Madrigal in Florence," pp. 155-58.

Chapters 26 and 27, music in Elizabethan England, pp. 210-222.

16

Chapel Royal

Catholicism and Anglicanism in England (William Byrd)

Music education, instruction, and theory (Thomas Morley)

Amazon logo Atlas, Allan W. "Elizabethan England." In Anthology of Renaissance Music. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Sons, 1998, pp. 661-75. ISBN: 9780393971699.

Morley, Thomas. A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke. London, UK, 1597 (1771 printing), pp. 1-9 and 74. (PDF - 1.0 MB)

17

Instrumental music and lute song (Doug Freundlich, guest performer/lecturer)

Dowland and lute song

Consort music

Jane Pickering lute book ("Toys;" "Maids in Constrite")

"Can she excuse?"

"Woods so Wild?" (William Byrd setting no. 30)

"Fitzwilliam virginal book"

Amazon logo Atlas, Allan W. "Elizabethan England." In Anthology of Renaissance Music. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Sons, 1998, pp. 675-97. ISBN: 9780393971699.

Lute Tablature: Maids in Constrite (PDF)

18

Music in society: The cries of London

More secular music in England

More keyboard music

In Nomine music

Listening quiz #2

Bridge 3: Missed traditions in the late renaissance
19

Chromaticism in the late 16th-century Italian mad-rigal

The dances and writings of Michael Praetorius

Wright and Simms. Chapter 28, "The Later Madrigal in Ferrara and Mantua," pp. 222-31.

Topic 4: Music in Venice 1570-1660
20

Maestri di cappella Venice: (Rore), Williaert

(Andrea and) Giovanni Gabrieli and music in the Basilica of S. Marco

Cori spezzati. Gabrieli's music for brass

Preamble to the Baroque and the rise of a new style: Florentine Camerata; Peri, Cavalieri, etc. (early monody)

Basso Continuo

Wright and Simms:

Chapter 23, "Renaissance Instruments: Instrumental Genres" (on Merulo), pp. 182-185.

Chapter 29, "Early Baroque Music," pp. 234-40.

Chapter 30, "Birth of Opera: Early Opera in Florence," pp. 240-44.

Chapter 31, "The Concerted Style in Venice and Dresden: Giovanni Gabrieli and the Concerted Motet," p. 254.

21Monteverdi (1567-1642) before and in Venice

Wright and Simms. "Early Opera in Mantua and Venice," pp. 244-50; and "Claudio Monteverdi and the Concerted Madrigal," pp. 254-56.

Amazon logo Rosand, Ellen. "Venice, 1580-1680." In The Early Baroque Era. Edited by Curtis Price. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. ISBN: 9780132237932.

Weiss and Taruskin. "From the Letters of Monteverdi," pp. 180-84; and "Castrato Singers," pp. 225-229.

22

Opera in Venice after Monteverdi

Barbara Strozzi

Venice's influence: Heinrich Schütz

Instrumental music in Venice

Wright and Simms. Chapter 31, "Strozzi and Schütz," pp. 256-61.

Weiss and Taruskin. "Schütz Recounts his Career," pp. 184-86.

Exam 2
Conclusion: Other baroque music / music towards the end of the seventeenth century
23

Non-Venetian developments: Oratorio: Carissimi, Jephte

Jewish music published in Venice

Church music towards the end of the century



Optional Reading


Wright and Simms. Chapter 32, "Religious Music in Baroque Rome," pp. 262-74.

24Music in the 1680s

Optional Reading


Wright and Simms. Chapter 33, "Instrumental Music in Italy," pp. 274-84; and Chapters 35-37, "Music in Paris and London," pp. 301-30.


 








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