Music Appreciation: The Middle Ages and The Renaissance and Baroque – Flashcards

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monophony
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• only one line is performed at a time
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polyphony
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• music with more than one line sounding at a time • Composing music with multiple independent lines first arose in the 10th century, and became popular around 1200 • Most early polyphonic compositions were written to celebrate major feasts • Paris is where the most significant amount of polyphonic music was composed in the 12th and 13th centuries • Composers from Paris who composed early polyphonic music were were called the "ars antiqua"
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Mass Ordinary
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Five sections • Kyrie • Gloria • Credo • Sanctus • Agnus Dei • The tradition of setting these five sections to music continues to this day • Music of a Renaissance Mass is based upon imitation
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secular song
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• written about nonreligious subjects • Favorite subjects were love, duty, friendship, ceremony, and poetry. • Rose to popularity in the 12th century when the troubadours were active • "courtly love"
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liturgical music
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• Most of the music that survives was designed for use in the Roman Catholic liturgy
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motet
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• a musical setting of a religious text, usually in Latin, but not traditionally associated with the Catholic liturgy and Mass • Four voices are normally present, but is sung by a small choir rather than by soloists • Since composers were not bound by rules set out by the Council of Trent, they wrote richer and more unusual music for motets than they did for the fixed liturgical texts of the Mass • The music is highly expressive, with a sensitive and compelling approach to the meaning of the text
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organum
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• Organum was an early polyphonic composition • Early organum harmonized the original monophonic plainchant • Later, one voice would slow down the original plainchant to allow a second voice to floridly sing above it • Note the difference between the original and organum versions of "Alleluia pascha nostrum"
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madrigal
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secular vocal pieces for a small group of singers, usually unaccompanied
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mass
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most important part of the services at a catholic church
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The significance of the School of Notre Dame
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The Notre Dame School, important to the history of music because it produced the earliest repertory of polyphonic (multipart) music to gain international prestige and circulation.
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The two leading composers of the School of Notre Dame
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The composers of the Notre-Dame school are all anonymous except for two, Léonin, or Leoninus (late 12th century), and Pérotin, or Perotinus (flourished c. 1200), both of whom are mentioned in a 13th-century treatise by an anonymous Englishman studying in Paris.
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Who Wrote The Four Seasons?
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Antonio Vivaldi
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Terraced Dynamics
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Expressive style typical of some early music in which volume levels shift abruptly from soft to loud and back without gradual crescendos and decrescendos.
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Fugue
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a contrapuntal composition in which a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.
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Suite
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A suite, in music, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with a prelude, by the early 1600s.
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Oratorio
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An oratorio (Italian pronunciation: [oraˈtɔːrjo]) is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias.
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Cantata
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past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb cantare, "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.
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Opera
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a dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists. grand opera, light opera, musical, musical comedy, opéra bouffe, operetta opera as a genre of classical music. a building for the performance of opera.
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Exposition
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In musical form and analysis, exposition is the initial presentation of the thematic material of a musical composition, movement, or section. The use of the term generally implies that the material will be developed or varied.
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Doctrine of Affections
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Doctrine of the affections, also called Doctrine Of Affects, German Affektenlehre, theory of musical aesthetics, widely accepted by late Baroque theorists and composers, that embraced the proposition that music is capable of arousing a variety of specific emotions within the listener.
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Concerto Gross
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The concerto grosso (pronounced, Italian for big concert(o), plural concerti grossi [konˈtʃɛrti ˈɡrɔssi]) is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists (the concertino) and full orchestra (the ripieno or concerto grosso).
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Ritornello form
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he first or final movement of a solo concerto, concerto grosso, or aria may be in "ritornello form", in which the ritornello is the opening theme, always played tutti, which returns in whole or in part and in different keys throughout the movement.
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ARS Nova
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Ars nova refers to a musical style which flourished in France and the Burgundian Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages: more particularly, in the period between the preparation of the Roman de Fauvel (1310-1314) and the death of the composer Guillaume de Machaut in 1377 (whose poems were a large inspiration for ...
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Gregorian Chant
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church music sung as a single vocal line in free rhythm and a restricted scale (plainsong), in a style developed for the medieval Latin liturgy. For over 1000 years, has been the official music of the Roman Catholic Church
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Cantus Firmus
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In music, a cantus firmus ("fixed song") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition.
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Aria
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Or arias in music, was originally any expressive melody usually, but not always, performed by a singer
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