Fugue in the Renaissance Motet

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-140
Author(s):  
Paul Walker
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
English Composers

This chapter explores fugal writing in the genre that contemporary writers indicated was the “home” of fugue: the motet. Beginning with the establishment by Jean Mouton and others of the classic Renaissance motet—based on serious counterpoint within a point-of-imitation structure—in the first two decades of the century, the fugal motet received its most important features at the hands of Nicolas Gombert in the 1530s when he expanded the use of imitation beyond a single thematic statement in each voice to feature a texture based on multiple returning statements. This approach then formed the basis for motet writing by Thomas Crecquillon and Jacobus Clemens non Papa around mid-century and later by Francesco Guerrero and G. P. da Palestrina. By century’s end, composers had grown weary of fugue’s use in vocal music, such that it plays a lesser role in the motets of Lassus, but English composers contributed their own efforts in the 1580s and 1590s.

The Sound of the English Picturesque in the Age of the Landscape Garden

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-212
Author(s):  
STEPHEN GROVES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
Nature Tourism ◽  
Scenic Beauty ◽  
English Music ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
Sister Arts ◽  
Song Texts

ABSTRACTIn eighteenth-century England, painting, poetry and gardening were often labelled the ‘sister arts’. An increasing interest in English landscape scenes and an emerging taste for ‘nature tourism’ gave rise to the ‘picturesque’ movement. Contemporary writers seldom considered English music as part of this ‘sisterhood’, however, or treated music as a medium for conveying national scenic beauty. When the picturesque was discussed in connection with music, eighteenth-century critics tended to use the concept to explain the tactics of novelty and surprise encountered in German instrumental music. Plays with regularity and expectation were analogous to the surprises and irregularities of picturesque ‘beauty spots’ – natural features studied and imitated by contemporary landscape gardeners. Accordingly, recent musicological studies of the picturesque have also preferred to emphasize its kinship with the unconventional or subversive formal schemas in instrumental music by German composers.This article addresses the silent aporia in this discourse: the apparent absence of any participation in the picturesque movement by composers from England, the country most closely associated with this aesthetic. Focusing on the pictorialism and pastoralism of eighteenth-century English song texts and their musical treatment, this article reveals previously ignored connections between the veneration of national landscape and English vocal music. In consequence, the glee – a decidedly marginal genre in traditional eighteenth-century music historiography – emerges at the centre of contemporary aesthetic concerns, as the foremost musical vehicle for the expression of a distinctively English, painterly engagement with national landscapes.

Beyond Drama: Monteverdi, Marino, and the Sixth Book of Madrigals (1614)

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Tim Carter
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Downward Spiral ◽  
Giambattista Marino

Monteverdi's Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1614) is often viewed as an outlier in his secular output. His Fourth and Fifth Books (1603, 1605) were firmly embroiled in the controversy with Artusi over the seconda pratica, while his Seventh (1619) sees him shifting style in favor of the new trends that were starting to dominate music in early seventeenth-century Italy: the Sixth Book falls between the cracks. But it also suffers—in modern eyes, at least—for the fact that it reflects the composer's first encounters with the poetry of Giambattista Marino, marking what many see as the start of a fundamental reorientation, if not downward spiral, in his secular vocal music. The problems are exposed by one of the Marino settings in the Sixth Book, “Batto, qui pianse Ergasto: ecco la riva,” in which an unnamed speaker tells Batto how Ergasto has been abandoned by Clori. The text has often been misunderstood. Uncovering the sources for the story—and the literary identities of Batto, Ergasto, and Clori—forces a new reading of the poetry and more particularly of Monteverdi's music. It also answers some profound questions in terms of how best to address issues of narration and representation, and of diegesis and mimesis, in this complex repertory.

Vasyl Bezkorovayny’s vocal works in Ukrainian music of the first half of the XX century

2019 ◽  
pp. 500-515
Author(s):  
Nataliia Kosaniak
Keyword(s):  
Choral Music ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Western European ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
Post War ◽  
Talented Artist

Vasyl Bezkorovayny (1880–1966) was a talented artist, an active figure in the musical life of Galicia and a representative of post-war Ukrainian emigrants in the United States of America. He wrote more than 350 works of various genres. Among them are compositions for symphony orchestra; vocal works — for chorus, ensembles or solo singing; chamber and instrumental music — for piano, violin, zither, cello; music for dramatic performances. The article deals with the archival and musicological analysis of expressive and stylistic features of V. Bezkorovayny’s vocal works, based on the materials of Stefanyk Lviv National Library of Ukraine. Attention is paid to the place of the composer’s vocal masterpieces in the context of Ukrainian vocal music of the first half of the XX century. The most important achievements of the composer related to the genres of choral and chamber vocal music. In style, the composer’s works combine the influences of M. Lysenko, composers of the «Peremyshl school» and Western European romantic and post-romantic models. The original secular choral music of V. Bezkorovayny covers genres of songs, plays, and large-form choirs. In his solo songs the influences of romantic western European music and Ukrainian folk songs affected the formation and approval of the composer’s style. Keywords: vocal music, chorus, solos, melodic-intonation means, harmony, rhythm.

Umberto Eco's Reflections on Morality in the Context of Cultural Identity

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (44) ◽  
pp. 84-88
Author(s):  
Jana Pecníková ◽  
Anna Anna Slatinská ◽  
Genovaitė Kačiuškienė
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Moral Identity ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Italian Society ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Umberto Eco ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
Identity Issue

The research paper focuses on the cultural and moral identity in Umberto Eco’s reflections. Attention is paid to the selected pieces. Umberto Eco is one of the most famous contemporary writers dealing with the issues of morality in Italian society. His works are devoted to the current perception of identity in the 21st century. The authors are interested in his view on values and identity in the selected chapters of his work. The aim of the paper is to analyse the identity issue in Umberto Eco’s works.The research objectives are based on recent doubts in cultural studies whether identity is fixed and firmly defined or acquired by a human being freely. Another question is the link between these two aspects. Although the origin of the word identity comes from Latin (idem – the same), nowadays it is more understood in its diversity as linguistic, cultural, national, moral identity, etc.

Recovery from memory failure when recalling a memorized performance: The role of musical structure and performance cues

2021 ◽  
pp. 102986492110254
Author(s):  
Roger Chaffin ◽  
Jane Ginsborg ◽  
James Dixon ◽  
Alexander P. Demos
Keyword(s):  
Vocal Music ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
Memory Failure ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Written Recall ◽  
Performance Gains ◽  
Over Time

To perform reliably and confidently from memory, musicians must able to recover from mistakes and memory failures. We describe how an experienced singer (the second author) recovered from mistakes and gaps in recall as she periodically recalled the score of a piece of vocal music that she had memorized for public performance, writing out the music six times over a five-year period following the performance. Five years after the performance, the singer was still able to recall two-thirds of the piece. When she made mistakes, she recovered and went on, leaving gaps in her written recall that lengthened over time. We determined where in the piece gaps started ( losses) and ended ( gains), and compared them with the locations of structural beats (starts of sections and phrases) and performance cues ( PCs) that the singer reported using as mental landmarks to keep track of her progress through the piece during the sung, public performance. Gains occurred on structural beats where there was a PC; losses occurred on structural beats without a PC. As the singer’s memory faded over time, she increasingly forgot phrases that did not start with a PC and recovered at the starts of phrases that did. Our study shows how PCs enable musicians to recover from memory failures.

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