COURSE MATERIALS:

Required text book:  Mark Evan Bonds, A History of Music in Western Culture, 4th ed., vol. I (Pearson, 2014), with accompanying Anthology of Scores (vol. I) and CDs (vol. I).  Selected passages from books and scores pertaining to this course may be found on our webpage.

 

Schedule for Reading/Listening Assignments, Papers, Quizzes, and Exams

Introduction to the Middle Ages.   Bonds, 3-15, 17-24.

Intro. to Plainchant: Church Year, Liturgical Books, Melodic Styles and

Notation.   Bonds, 25-37.

Plainchant (cont’d): Modes.  Bonds, 37-42.   Listening:  Psalm 116 (Laudat Dominum) with antiphon Pacem relinquo; Introit Resurrexi from the Easter Mass.

The Mass and Office.  Listening:  Easter Mass (Gradual, Alleluia,

Sequence, and Communion).

 

Expansion of the Liturgy:  Bonds, 42-52.  Listening: Hildegard of Bingen’s

Ordo Virtutum.        QUIZ #1

 

Secular Monophony:  Latin Songs; Troubadours and Trouvères. Bonds, 52-58.   Listening: Beatriz de Dia (A chantar), Cantigas de Santa Maria (A Santa

Maria dadas).

 

The Rise of Polyphony. Bonds, 59-63.   Listening: Kyrie Cunctipotens genitor.

 

Notre Dame Organum.  Bonds, 63-67.  Listening: Leonin, Haec dies.

The Ars Antiqua Motet From its Origins to 1300.  Bonds, 67-73.

Listening: three motets (Anthology nos. 12, 13, and 14).

Instruments and Instrumental Music of the Middle Ages.  Bonds, 87-91. Listening:  Anthology no. 28 (La quinte estampie real).

 

QUIZ #2

French Ars Nova: Philippe de Vitry, Notation, Roman de Fauvel.  Bonds, 74-78.

Listening: Vitry’s Garrit gallus.

 

14th-Century Liturgical Polyphony.   Guillaume de Machaut: Life, Motets, Mass. Bonds, 78-82.  Listening: Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame (Kyrie).

 

Machaut (cont’d): Secular Songs.  Bonds, 82-83.   Listening: Machaut’s Je puis trop bien, Douce dame jolie, and Ma fin est mon commencement.

 

Italian Ars Nova Song Styles.  Bonds, 85-86.  Listening: Jacopo da Bologna’s Non al suo amante and Lorenzo’s A poste messe.

 

Francesco Landini.  Listening: Ecco la primavera.

Ars Subtilior.  Bonds, 83-85.  Listening: Cordier’s Tout par compas, Antonello da

Caserta’s Beaute parfaite (score given out in class).

 

Transition to the Renaissance: Johannes Ciconia.  Listening: Ciconia’s O rosabella (score given out in class).

 

Ciconia (cont’d): Motets and Mass Music.  Listening: Doctorum principem.

Review for Mid-term Exam.

 

MID-TERM EXAM

 

A Renaissance in Music? — An Overview.      Bonds, 93-104.

 

English Music of the Early Fifteenth Century.  Bonds, 105-108.  Listening: Dunstable’s Quam pulchra es.

 

 

Guillaume Du Fay: Life, Chansons.  Bonds, 108-111.  Listening: Du Fay’s Adieu ces bons vins (Anthology no. 40).

 

Guillaume Du Fay: Motets and Hymn Settings.  Listening: Conditor alme siderum and Nuper rosarum flores. Du Fay (cont’d)

 

SPRING BREAK    (no class)

 

Guillaume Du Fay’s Masses.   Bonds, 121-126.  Listening: ballade Se la face ayale and the Missa Se la face ay pale (Gloria).        PAPER #1 DUE

 

The “L’homme armé” Tradition.  Bonds, 126-127.  Listening: the tune “L’homme armé” (Ex. 5-2) and Dufay’s Missa L’homme armé (Agnus Dei; score given out in

class); Ockeghem’s Missa prolationum (Kyrie).

 

The Late 15th Century: Songs by Ockeghem, Busnois, and their contemporaries. Bonds, 136-139.   Listening: Gizeghem’s De tous biens plaine, and Isaac’s                                              Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen.

 

Josquin des Prez: Life and Motets.  Bonds, 114-120.  Listening: motets Ave Maria and Absalon fili mi.

 

Josquin (cont’d): Masses.  Bonds, 128-136.  Listening: Fortuna desperata and

Missa Fortuna desperata (Kyrie and Agnus Dei); Missa Pange Lingua (Kyrie).

 

Josquin: Secular Works.  Josquin’s El grillo (Anthology no. 44) and Faulte d’argent (score given out in class).

 

Instrumental Music, 1480-1550.  Bonds, 144-151, 172-178.    Listening: Anthology nos. 60-64.

 

 QUIZ #3

 

Italian Music, 1490-1520.  Bonds, 139-142.  Listening: Marco Cara’s Horvenduto ho la speranza.

 

Secular Forms, 1520-1550: Parisian Chanson.   Bonds, 152-153.   Listening: Sermisy’s Tant que vivray.

 

Secular Forms (cont’d): Italian Madrigal.    Bonds, 153-156.     Listening: Arcadelt’s Il bianco e dolce cigno and Rore’s Da le belle contrade d’oriente.

 

Italian Madrigal (cont’d).   The English Madrigal and Lute Song.  Bonds, 157-165.  Listening:  Marenzio’s Solo e pensoso and Luzzaschi’s T’amo mia vita.

 

Music of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.   Bonds, 165-172, 178-184. Listening:  Palestrina’s Missa Pape Marcelli (Credo) and Lassus’ Cum essem                                           parvulus.

 

Introduction to the Baroque Era.   Bonds, 187-195.

The Seconda Prattica.  Bonds, 196-209.  Listening:  Peri’s Dunque fra torbide

onde; Caccini’s Sfogava con le stelle.

 

Claudio Monteverdi and the Madrigal.  Bonds, 210-217.  Listening: Monteverdi’s Cruda Amarilli and Zefiro torna.

 

 PAPER #2 DUE

 

Claudio Monteverdi and the Birth of Opera.  Bonds, 218-223.  Listening: Monteverdi’s Orfeo (excerpt from Act II).

Monteverdi (cont’d).    Final Exam Review

 

FINAL EXAM

Readings: Course materials will be available online and/or handed out in class.

Listening: Students can access listening and reading assignments through links on the course webpage. Some course materials will also be made available on our website.

Description:  We will study a representative selection of pieces in the current repertory of the concert hall from the last nearly 300 years of Western classical music.

Format: Two 90-minute lecture each week; assigned listening/reading to be completed before the relevant class meeting(s).

 

Class Schedule

Introduction to the course

Read “Elements of Music” on pitch, melody, harmony, mode, and tonality

Read “Elements of Music” on rhythm and sound quality

Read “Elements of Music” on form.      Review for Quiz I

Quiz I on “Elements of Music”

Music as Religion: read on Handel’s Messiah; listen to Part I

Messiah (cont’d), Parts II and III

Music as Reasoned Discourse: read on Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, and listen to mvts. I and II

Clarinet Quintet, mvts. III and IV

Music as Personal Triumph: read on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and listen to mvt. I

Ninth Symphony, mvts. II and III

Ninth Symphony, mvt. IV

Quiz II

Program Music: read on Berlioz’s Symphonie Fasntastique; listen to mvts. I and II

Symphonie Fantastique, mvts. III, IV and V

FALL BREAK

Music Romanticism: read on and listen to Chopin’s Ballade in G minor

Music Romanticism – piano miniatures: Schubert, Schumann and Chopin

Musical Romanticism on a Large Scale: Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54

Quiz III

Musical Theater: read on Verdi’s Otello

Viewing Otello

Otello, Act I

Otello, Act II and III

Otello, Act IV

Paper due on Otello; class discussion

THANKSGIVING BREAK (no classes)

Modernism’s New Language; read on Stravinsky’s

Pétrouchka; listen to Tableaux 1 and 2

Pétrouchka; listen to Tableaux 3 and 4

American Music: read on Bernstein’s West Side Story; listen to Act I

West Side Story, Act II

Final Exam

 

 

 

Readings:	Course materials are available online or will be handed out in class.
Listening:	Students can access selected listening assignments through links on our webpage. As always, the page is restricted to Il Trillo use only.
Description:	This course asks the question of how we deal with past works of art as seen and heard with 21st-century sensibilities. We will study a representative selection of pieces in the current repertory of the concert hall from the last 300 years of Western classical music.  This course will have two guiding principles: the “past” begins yesterday, and the art of listening to music – live or in recorded form – is a skill of active participation in which the listener engages with the artistic process.     In dealing with the music of the past, the course will consider the following ideas.  Is a work of art (a composition) a one-time aesthetic statement of expression representative of its own time, or does that work continue to live, breathe, change, and evolve – and, if so, how?  After inspiration, composition, preparation, and initial performances – necessary steps in its gestation – is a work heard (seen) differently with the passing of time? Should a given contemporary performance or recording be at all “identical” or “close” to the original performance, and if so in what ways?  In fact, in what ways may we speak of “authenticity” in musical performance? What were the expectations of listeners at the time of first performances and should that have any bearing on performances today? How does the 21st-century performer deal with varying levels of prescriptive musical notations of the past and what is the relationship of notation to the interpretive role of the performing musician?  With the development of recorded technology and our extraordinary access to recorded music, how important are live performances today? Is there a difference, in fact, in hearing a work live or recorded, and if so what is it and how does it affect us?

 

Class Schedule

Introduction to the course.  “The Notation is not the Music”:  Discussion of the parameters of music that make it a work of art:  melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, tone color, texture, form, articulation, phrasing, and expression.

Week 1  – Background to the basic premise of the course: what is the nature of a work of musical art (in the Western European legacy) and in what ways do we respond to it in the 21st century? Introduction to basic listening skills: the parameters of music; genres; historical styles.  [Elements of Music]  We will use six works to illustrate melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, tone color, and form:  Haydn’s “Surprise” Symphony (slow movement); Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata (third movement); Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (first movement); Schubert’s song “Erlkönig”;  Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune; and Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”.

Performance practices and historical traditions, from the Baroque period to the present. Music as Religion: read about and listen to Handel’s Messiah

Week 2  – Continue with Elements of Music. Performance practices and historical traditions, from the Baroque period to the present day.  Use Handel’s oratorio Messiah and his opera Julius Caesar. “Performing Practice” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001); readings in Performance Practice: Music After 1600, ed. H. M. Brown and Stanley Sadie (1989).

“The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past” (1988): J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #5 (first movement).  Introduction to the essential points made in Richard Taruskin’s article on musical performance and authenticity, especially the performer as interpreter vs. the performer as transmitter.  Listen to Glenn Gould and Andras Schiff performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

“Authenticity”  — being faithful to the score, to composers’ intentions, to the first performance of a work?  The rise and commercialization of “original instrument” recordings. Audience expectations then and now: can we listen to music with 18th-, 19th- , or even 20th-century ears?    Beethoven’s Symphonies. Reading:  Butt, Playing With History (2002), Chpt. 1 Week 3  – ”Authenticity”  — being faithful to the score, to composers’ intentions, to the first performance of a work?  The rise and commercialization of “original instrument” recordings. Use Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5, as well as Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. Kenyon, “Authenticity and Early Music: Some Issues and Questions” (1988);  Taruskin, “Beethoven Symphonies . . . The New Antiquity,” Opus (1987).

Music as Personal Triumph: read about and listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

Week 4  –

Program Music: read about and listen to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique

Week 5  – Examination of meanings and conventions in the ever-more-prescriptive musical notation of the past 500 years.  Use a Monteverdi madrigal; a Mozart piano concerto; piano works by Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Carter. Readings: Butt, Playing With History (2002), Chpt. 4; “The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations”;  D. Ranada, “The Orchestral Image,” Opus (1986).

Essay #1 due

Examination of meanings and conventions in the ever-more-prescriptive musical notation of the past 500 years.  We may select a Monteverdi madrigal, a Mozart piano concerto, and piano works by Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, and Schoenberg.  Comparative listening: multiple performances (recordings) of selected compositions. We will use some of Stravinsky’s multiple recordings (as conductor) of his own works.

Music as Reasoned Discourse: read about and listen to the first movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet

Week 6  – Adaptations: older music reworked.  Berg Violin Concerto, Stokowski’s orchestral arrangements of J. S. Bach and others.

Musical Romanticism: read about and listen to Chopin’s Ballade in G minorMusical Romanticism — Piano Miniatures: Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin

Musical Romanticism – Large Scale: Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54

Week 7  – Art music and its interactions with the traditions of jazz, pop and globalized world musics. The Jacques Loussier Trio, Gunther Schuller, Bernstein’s West Side Story. F A L L   B R E A K

Making music and hearing music in live performances.  What effect have recordings had on our modern musical culture?   Reading: Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (2004) [selected pages TBA] Crutchfield, “Brahms by Those Who Knew Him,” Opus (1986)

The age of mechanical reproduction.  Individual projects on varied repertory: focus on live performances vs. recorded works.

Week 8  – Making music and hearing music in live performances.  What effects have recordings had on our modern musical culture? Reading:  Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (2004) Crutchfield, “Brahms by Those Who Knew Him,” Opus (1986)

Individual projects (cont’d)

Week 9  – The age of mechanical reproduction (cont’d).  Individual projects on varied repertory.

Modernism’s New Language: read about and listen to Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka Week 10  – Modernism and post-modernism: their influence on shaping musical performances.  Attendance at performances of contemporary music. Reading:  Butt, Playing With History (2002), Chpt. 5.

Essay #2 due

Art music and its interactions with the traditions of jazz, pop and globalized world musics:  Jacques Loussier Trio, Gunther Schuller American Music: read about and listen to Bernstein’s West Side Story, Act I

Week 11  – Comparative listening: multiple performances (recordings) of selected compositions. Use Stravinsky’s multiple recordings [as conductor] of his own works.

Bernstein’s West Side Story; listen to Act II Many years after the premiere Bernstein records the music of West Side Story

Week 12  – Audience expectations then and now: can we listen to music with 18th-, 19th- , or even 20th-century ears?    Reading:  Butt, Playing With History (2002), Chpt. 1.

Course description: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) and GEORG FRIEDERICH HANDEL (1685-1759) are towering figures of the Baroque Period in the history of Western music. Though exact contemporaries and born in cities only some 70 miles apart, the two composers followed radically different career paths. In the course of examining a broad selection of their compositions we will consider not only the rhetorical and structural features of their respective musical “dialects,” but also how the various social, religious, and political environments in which they worked affected the nature and scope of their musical activities.        

 

Course Requirements:

1) Three quizzes (each 15% of the course grade) in which you will be asked to define specific terms and write brief essays on larger concepts that have been discussed in class and in the readings. You will also be asked to identify and comment on recorded excerpts drawn from works we have studied in class.

2) The final examination (30% of the course grade) will consist of term identifications, recorded examples, and short essays.  

3) One 10-12 page essay (25%) on a comparison of performances of a representative work.  

 

Required Texts:

1) Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Norton, 2000; paperback 2001)

2) Christopher Hogwood, Handel (Thames & Hudson, rev. ed. 2007)

 

CLASS SCHEDULE

 

Introduction to the course

Handel’s youth and early training: Halle and Hamburg

Read: Hogwood, pp. 11-29

 

Handel in Italy (I): Sacred Music  

Read: Hogwood, pp. 30-48

Listen: Handel: Dixit Dominus Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), Dixit Dominus

Handel in Italy (II): Cantatas

Listen: Tu fedel?;  Tra le fiamme  

Handel in Italy (III):  La Resurrezione (early oratorio)

Handel in Italy (IV): Opera seria

Read: Dean, pp.1-21 (“Handel as Opera Composer”)

Listen: Rodrigo, Act II scenes 9-12

Agrippina, Overture; Act II scene 5

Arrival in England: Rinaldo

Read: Hogwood, pp. 49-65; Dean, pp. 168-78, 180-83

Listen: Rinaldo Act I, Armida’s entrance, Almirena’s “Birds”

scene, Rinaldo’s “Cara sposa” and his rage aria

“Royal” Music

Read: Hogwood, pp. 65 (bottom) – 72

Listen: Handel, Birthday Ode for Queen Anne

Handel, Water Music, Suite in F

 

Masque and the Beginnings of the Oratorio

Handel:  Acis and Galatea   

Keyboard and other instrumental music: Suite in E

Recorder/Oboe Sonata in F          Read: Hogwood, pp. 72-75

Violin Sonatas

 

Quiz No.1

BACH

1. S. Bach’s musical roots

Read: Wolff, Prologue and Ch. 1 (pp. 1-31)

New Bach Reader, pp. 295-307

 

Virtuosity and compositional planning

Read: Wolff, Chs. 2 and 3 (pp. 33-75)

Listen: Toccata in D minor BWV 565

Capriccio on the Departure of the Beloved Brother

 

Organist at Arnstadt (1703-07)

Read: Wolff, pp. 77-top of 98

Listen: Passacaglia in C minor

Bach’s Earliest Cantatas

Read: Wolff, pp. 98-115

Listen: Cantata 4: Christ lag in Todesbanden

Court Musician: Weimar 1708-14  

Read: Wolff, Ch. 5 (pp. 117-45)

Listen: BWV 208, “Hunt” Cantata

Orgelbüchlein (excerpts TBA)

Weimar sacred cantatas

Read: Wolff, pp. 147-69 (top)

Listen: Cantata 182: Himmelskönig, sei willkomen

Cantata 63: Christen, ätzet diesen Tag  

 

The Concept of the Concerto

Read: Wolff, pp. 169-85.  Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052   

Listen: Concerto for two violins in D minor

 

Capellmeister in Cöthen; the violin sonatas and partitas

Read: Wolff, pp. 187-207 (top)

Listen: Organ chorales from “Great Eighteen Chorales”

An Wasserflüssen Babylon, BWV 653

Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, BWV 658

Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, BWV 654

 

The “French” Suites, the Inventions, and the Well-Tempered Clavier Bk. I

Read: Wolff, 207-32 (top).  Invention #1 in C major  

Listen: Suite #5 in G

 

Chamber Music:  Gamba Sonatas; The Six Brandenburg Concertos

Read: Wolff, 232-35

Listen:  Brandenburg Concerto 2

Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

Read: Handout

Listen: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5

 

Quiz No. 2

 

SPRING BREAK

 

Handel

 

Handel and the Royal Academy of Music in the 1720s (Radamisto; Ottone)

Read: Hogwood, pp. 76-89.  The role of castrati.

Listen: Radamisto:  Overture, ActI scene 4, Act II

scenes 1-2

Ottone: Overture, Act I “La speranza” and

“Dell’onda”; Act II “Dopo l’orrore”; Act III “Dove sei,” “Io son

tradito,” and “Tanti affanni”

 

Giulio Cesare  

Read: Dean, pp. 483-500

Listen: Overture, “Emio dirò,” “Svegliativi nel core,”

“Alma del gran,” and “Cara speme”

Orlando: magic opera   

Read: Hogwood, pp. 90-103

Listen: Overture, Act I scenes 1-4

 

Saul: oratorio   

Read: Hogwood, pp. 153-58

Listen: Act III

Concerti grossi, Op. 6 (1739); Organ Concertos

Read: Hogwood, pp. 158-67

Listen: Concerto for Organ in F, Op. 4, no. 5

Concerti Grossi Op. 6, nos. 1 and 3

 

Messiah

Read: Hogwood, pp. 167-83

Messiah (cont’d)

Messiah (cont’d)

 

Quiz No. 3

 

Bach

 

Thomaskantor in Leipzig: the cantatas (1st Jahrgang)

Read: Wolff, pp. 237-75 (top)

Cantata 147: Herz und Mund und Tat (chorale: “Wohl mir dass”)

Magnificat

Leipzig cantatas (cont’d): the 2nd Jahrgang

Read: Wolff, pp. 275-88

Cantata 140: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme

 

The Passions; St. Matthew Passion (I)  

Read: Wolff, pp. 288-95

Listen: The Passion according to St. Matthew [videorecording]

 

St. Matthew Passion  (II)

Read: Wolff, pp. 296-303

 

St. Matthew Passion (III)

Read: New Bach Reader, pp. 508-19

 

Clavierübung I and II

Read: Wolff, pp. 373-89

Partitas Nos. 1 and 4; Italian Concerto

PAPER DUE

 

B minor Mass

Read: Wolff, pp. 367-72; 438-42

Listen: Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo

Goldberg Variations (I)

Goldberg Variations (II)

Discussion of Performances

 

Musical Offering

Read: Wolff, pp. 417-31

Listen: Moroney, complete

Art of the Fugue: Contemplating music

Shadows and influences: Bach, Handel, and later music history

Read: Wolff, pp. 431-38; 442-72

Read: New Bach Reader, pp. 485-506;  Hogwood, pp. 232-76

Listen: Goebel, complete

Final Exam