The Pavan and Galliard

• Renaissance dances organised into pairs or groups

• Homophonic texture with sections repeated in a more ornamented form

The galliard• a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century

• mentioned in dance manuals from England, France, Spain, Germany and Italy

• quik and lively tempo, with three beats in the bar

• a favorite dance of Queen Elizabeth I of England - although it is quite a vigorous dance, in 1589 when the Queen was in her mid fifties, John Stanhope of the Privy Chamber reported, "the Queen is so well as I assure you, six or seven galliards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary exercise"

The pavane• a slow, stately tempo

• two beats in a bar

• usually performed before a galliard

• generally follows binary form - AA1, BB1, etc.

• generally uses counterpoint or homophonic accompaniment

Named from the stately sweep of a lady's train likened to a peacock's tail. The decorous sweep of the pavane suited the new more sober Spanish-influenced courtly manners of 16th century Italy, and the pavane may have originated in Spain. The musical pavane survived hundreds of years after the dance itself was abandoned.

Viols were still the most popular stringed instruments but the new violins were beginning to be used in combination with the more established instruments like harpsichords, lutes and bass viols.

Ballett• a light-hearted madrigal

• strophic in style (verse repeating and the same music for each verse)

• each verse ending with a fa-la chorus

• more homophonic in style (more chordal) than the madrigal proper

Thomas Morley’s Now is the Month of Maying 

Ayre• John Dowland was the most prolific writer

• Music written as a solo line on one page of a book with the harmony on the facing page

• Most frequently performed by a solo singer accompanied by a lute or viol

Other Features of the Period…

• Composers experimented with collections of dances played together as a suite • Variations and grounds were popular - a way of extending themes by repeating a simple theme followed by at least one variation• Fantasias were popular - contrapuntal in style and usually performed by a solo instrument such as a lute• Other styles were developed from Italy:

- the canzona (like a song for instruments) - the ricercar (in which melodies were treated with much imitation)- the toccata (from the Italian verb 'to touch', which was an instrumental style for keyboard and

required very fluent and rapid finger work)

BAROQUE

Features

* basso continuo - a kind of continuous accompaniment notated with figured bass, usually for a sustaining bass instrument and a keyboard instrument * monody - music for one melodic voice with accompaniment, characteristic of the early 17th century, especially in Italy * homophony - music with one melodic voice and rhythmically similar accompaniment (this and monody are contrasted with the typical Renaissance polyphony) * dramatic musical expression * dramatic musical forms like opera, drama per musica * combined instrumental-vocal forms, such as the oratorio and cantata * new instrumental techniques, like tremolo and pizzicato * clear and linear melody

* the aria * the ritornello aria (repeated short instrumental interruptions of vocal passages) * the concertato style (contrast in sound between orchestra and solo-instruments or small groups of instruments) * precise instrumental scoring (in the Renaissance, exact instrumentation for ensemble playing was rarely indicated) * idiomatic instrumental writing: better use of the unique properties of each type of musical instrument * virtuosic instrumental and vocal writing, with appreciation for virtuosity as such * ornamentation * development to modern Western tonality (major and minor scales)

Genres

Baroque composers wrote in many different musical genres. Opera, invented in the late Renaissance, became an important musical form during the Baroque, with the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), Handel, and others. The oratorio achieved its peak in the work of Bach and Handel; opera and oratorio often used very similar music forms, such as a widespread use of the da capo aria.In other religious music, the mass and motet receded slightly in importance, but the cantata flourished in the work of Bach and other Protestant composers. Virtuoso organ music also flourished, with toccatas, fugues, and other works.

Instrumental sonatas and dance suites were written for individual instruments, for chamber groups, and for (small) orchestra. The concerto emerged, both in its form for a single soloist plus orchestra and as the concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists is contrasted with the full ensemble. The French overture, with its contrasting slow and fast sections, added grandeur to the many courts at which it was performed.

Keyboard works were sometimes written largely for the pleasure and instruction of the performer. These included a series of works by the mature Bach that are widely considered to be the intellectual culmination of the Baroque era: the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and The Art of Fugue.

Baroque forms

Binary form AB

Simplest baroque form Used primarily for the individual dances in the

suite Two sections, usually separated by a repeated

double bar The two sections usually share melodic material Section A: tonic key – modulation to

dom/rel.min or rests on dom/rel.min chord Section B: starts where A ended, then works

back to tonic, perhaps via other keys such as subdominant

Ternary form/da capo aria form ABA Three sections Commonly used by Baroque composers for

arias in operas and oratorios A – tonic key, B – modulating and ending on

chord V of the tonic in preparation for the return of section A

Also known as ‘da capo’ form – baroque composers only wrote out the first two sections and ended section B ‘da capo’ meaning ‘to the head’, indicating that the performers should go back to the start of A

Rondo form/Ritornello form ABACA A form where one section keeps returning, or coming

round again and again The middle sections contrast with the A section through:

tonality, instrumentation, melody or a combination of features

The A sections are known as the rondo theme whilst the middle sections (B, C etc) are know as episodes

Ritornello is very similar. The sections in Ritornello form tend to be shorter and there are more of them, than in Rondo form. Ritornello form is commonly found in the movements of concerto grosso and solo concerto

Variation form AA1A2A3

Favourite form with Renaissance keyboard composers, and the form continued into the Baroque period

In performance, solo singers and instrumentalists were used (and often expected) to vary a repeated line or section by adding ornaments or scalic passages, embellishing the line written in the score

Opera

Main features

Overture instrumental introduction

Recitatives conversational

Arias solo song

Chorus SATB

Many composers such as Monteverdi, Handel and Purcell began work on the new form of opera. As well as this,they worked in all the major genres of the day - madrigals, church music and instrumental pieces.

Purcell’s Dido and Anaeus

Purcell’s Dido and Anaeus

It was composed in the late 17th century at a time when harmony was settling down to what we know today and opera plots were drawn from ancient stories. It focuses on the rise and fall of Queen Dido and includes all the usual ingredients that make up an opera.

• Aria: short solo song, usually with orchestral accompaniment, common also in oratorios. Usually written in ternary form (ABA) - known as da capo arias

• Recitative: melodic speech set to music. Often simple accompaniment, sometimes nothing more than a basal continuo. Can be conversational and improvisational, giving a naturalness somewhere between speech and song

• Basso continuo: the most common practice is using a harpsichord playing occasional chords

Fugue

Structure of a Fugue

The form of a fugue is usually in three parts called the:

EXPOSITIONDEVELOPMENTFINAL SECTION

Exposition The section at the start of the

fugue Each voice enters in turn with the

subject/answer idea Usually centred around the tonic

and dominant keys of the fugue

Final section

Re-hear the subject, played with some emphasis and sometimes in stretto

Return to the tonic key to round off the piece

Development This section comes after each voice has

introduced the fugal subject and the tonic/dominant keys

The main motives from the subject and countersubject are tossed about between the voices, usually involving sequences and movement around several keys

Key terms/phrases

Voice* Each melodic line in the fugue is called a voice, whether sung or played* There may be 3 or 4 voices in a fugue* In a 4-voice fugue, the voices are referred to as Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass

Subject

2 bars long Starts on the dominant not (D), but is

firmly in the tonic key of G minor Each bar has a different interval and

rhythmic ideas The second bar features stepwise

movement

Complex and sophisticated

In many fugues, the subject, answer, countersubject and free material all share motif material

Listening:J.S. Bach: ‘G minor fugue’ from The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1

Key terms/phrases

StrettoWhen an answer begins before the subject is finished – creating an overlap of entries

Key terms/phrases

Episode* A passage where all of the voices are working with free material* Often found in the development section but can come between entries of the subject/answer in the exposition

Key terms/phrases

Free materialOnce the first voice has completed the subject and countersubject, it moves onto free material – contrapuntal padding.

Key terms/phrases

CountersubjectWhen the first voice has completed the subject and the second voice is playing the answer, the first voice continues by playing a new theme that is called the countersubject. It usually contrasts with the subject/answer phrase shape.

Stretto

Lots of examples Start of final section (bars 28-29) Three overlapping entries of the subject

in the space of 11/2 bars

Free material

Basically anything that is not the subject, answer or countersubject

Bach is too clever though!

Countersubject

Starts in bar 3 on the lower stave Ideas from the subject are reversed and

inverted

Four-part fugue exposition

The entries of a fugue alternate between the subject and answer, tonic and dominant:

* Subject (tonic)* Answer (dominant)* Subject (tonic)* Answer (dominant)

Key terms/phrases

Subject* The first theme that is played in the fugue* Played by one voice, usually as a monophonic line – first fugal entry* Usually in the tonic key

Key terms/phrases

Answer* The theme played by the second voice * The answer usually has exactly or almost the same rhythm and interval patterns as the subject, but it is usually in the dominant key

Answer

Starts half way through bar 2 Similar shape to the subject Starts on the tonic then modulates to

the dominant area of D minor The intervals patterns are not the same

as the subject - TONAL answer (if they were the same - REAL answer)

The Chorale

During the 16th century, the Protestant church in Germany wanted the congregation to be more involved in the service. Rather than the choir singing the hymns in latin, they decided to write hymns to be sung in German by the whole congregation.

A German hymn-tune of this kind is known as a Chorale. The tunes were sometimes newly composed, sometimes adapted from plainchant or from popular songs.

A Chorale is written in four parts - soprano, alto, tenor and bass. The texture is usually homophonic.