Music 120 notes

Like a musical, but with even less non-singing. First in the early 1600s, sprouted from academies and similar institutions.

Venice, 1630s were when Operas went big. Venice was a center of culture at the time, and was a city-state. Also the main exchange point for trade with the East, which brought in money. "Carnival" were the few months between Christmas and the start of Lent, which involved lots of parties.

First dedicated Opera theater built in 1637. By the end of the century, there were nine in Venice. The author of a "libretto", the book of text/lyrics for an opera, was given much more credit than the musical composers. But singers, esp. sopranos, and pastranis, were adored the most, got the most money, etc. Just like today! Women were finally able to have big public roles in music.

It was a bit scandalous for women to have such a big pulbic role, and the content of most Operas was a bit scandalous too, often involving crime, partying, etc.

Giasone, by Francesco Cavalli: King Jason cheating on his wife, both his lovers have his twins, he tries to murder people and people threaten about murdering and stuff, etc.

Operas usually focused on a single voice, with occasional duets. "Recitative" parts of an opera were not as interesting musically and were more speech-like and undertandable. "Arias" were more emotional and songlike (aria means song in Italian). Most of the music was dramatic and very much based on the emotions of characters or events in the story.

Carnival, between christmas and lent (I think), is when christians partied hard. No operas allowed in many places during lent immediately afterwards.

Son of a French father and African mother. Trained as violinist, composer, and swordsman. Eventually led the Concert des Amateurs, an early public concert group. One of the best violinists of his time. In 1776, some people wanted him to join the Paris Opera, a very prestigious one, but some opposed him because of his mixed race. He wrote many operas afterwards anyway, and fought for abolition.

One of the first "celebrity" composers; usually performers were more popular. But without lyrics, who else will you celebrate? In his early years he worked for a prince but didn't have much creative freedom. But word got out!

Haydn's music is called "classical" rather than "galant" because it's more complex, eg, counterpoint, and longer tension-release cycles.

He was recruited to write some symphonies in London for public concert. His "London Symphonies" were extremely popular. Symphonies were the sort of music that might be played to an opera, but there was no theatrical component. Symphonies have four movements:

1. Fast, Sonata
2. Slow, Theme & Variations (Haydn's specialty)
3. Minuet (like a dance)
4. Fast, Rondo

Wind and percussion instruments became a thing, such as clarinets and french horns.

Opera Seria was usually set in classic times (roman, greek), with very moral heroes who ended up choosing to care about the "greater good" over their personal passions. So the plots were boring, and explained during the less-musical "recitative" (as opposed to "aria") parts of an Opera. Opera Seria was mainly about the arias, because of the boring plot.

Castrati were castrated males. Before this era, pre-pubescent boys were trained to play Sopranos then released when their voices dropped, which was high-effort for the Church. But sometimes Castrati would eventually go into the Opera at some point, and could become stars. Castrati were not forced into it; their families were paid some sum of money, and they had great job security. Their voices were often higher than women, but could hold a note for longer (than either women or children) because of their large lung capacities. Ironically, castrani played very manly characters and might be sex symbols in culture because of their celebrity status. Operas with a star castrani were like rock concerts; audiences would yell their support and applaud throughout arias.

Seria arias were often written to leave time for audience interaction. They were "virtuosic": Difficult to sing, putting tons of emphasis on the singer and dazzling the audience. Commonly they were "Da Capo Aria": A-B-A. An instrumental ritornello is repeated to indicate when the audience should do react.

Comedic. Set in the present day. Often about class conflict, eg with servants. Like Seria, plot was concentrated into recitative sections, while arias were about emotions. The arias were still a primary source of entertainment for the audience, but the words were perhaps more important than the music. Aria music was simple and pleasing.

La Serva Padrona: "Servant Lady". A master Uberto and two servants (Serpina and one other). Uberto wants to fire her for being stuck up, and Serpina pretends she has an awesome life set up and a suitor in the army. Serpina successfully convinces Uberto he will be sad when she leaves, so he marries her, and she got exactly what she wanted.

Servants usually "win" in opera buffa, even though audiences were usually not servants.

They sound not all that different from a modern day musical.

Buffa eventually became more popular than Seria by the end of the century.

An opera by Mozart (yes, Wolfgang Amadeus). Was it seria or buffa? Debuted is 1787. Don Giovani is a wealthy man who wants to bang lots of chicks. However, he's not a great seducer, and basically tries to rape people instead. In the beginning, he's sorta trying to rape Donna Anna, then Donna Anna's father fights Giovanni and dies. Some women unsuccessfully try to stop Don Giovanni's future attacks with limited success, until a statue of Donna Anna's father comes to life and settles the score for good by sending some undead-looking stuff to attack him and bring him to hell.

Don Giovanni has a combination of serious (the final scene) and humorous ("catalog" aria; counting how many women Giovanni has slept with) arias. It's like a Buffa in that the plot is critically important. That plot is about the present day and class relations, like Buffa, but is about a serious topic, like Seria.

It's not even clear if Giovanni was meant to be a sort of likeable, mischevious troublemaker, or a truly terrible villain.

Endings were typically bad, with the main character (usually a soprano woman) frequently committing suicide, murdered, etc.

La Traviata: Violetta is dying of tuberculosis, aka consumption. Women with tb were considered very attractive, because they were pale and had flushed cheeks. Violetta first decides to just indulge herself constantly until an Alfredo who loves her oh so much convinces her that life is worth taking seriously. In the final act, she's alone in paris about to die. She's trying to let Alfredo avoid her suffering? But Alfredo comes to visit her, and she dies.

"Coloratura Soprano": Really high notes that move quickly, impressive. Contrast to "lyric" sopranos more about lyrics, and in a much lower register, and "dramatic" sopranos which are almost spoken, and are much lower.

Encouraged the stereotype of women being more emotional.

Tosca: A Mario (guy) is being tortured offstage while his girlfriend has to hear him and suffers emotionally almost as much as he does physically.

Working definition: The belief that nationality and nations should be based on culture, language, ethnicity, etc. They would oppose a state that contained multiple "nations", eg the USSR. Conversely, if an area that shares a culture is split up into multiple states, a nationalist would believe they should be merged.

Nationalists would sometimes sell their ideology with nostalgia; the idea that you'll go back to where you truly belong and be among your brothers if you form a nation based on culture.

Commonly:

• Folk (traditional or traditional-style) tunes.
• Simple
• Chorus (many people singing), to indicate cultural unity
• Strings

• Lingua Franca

  Verdi and Richard Wagner (Opera writers) were nationalists. Wagner was in independence armies before becoming a composer. He was very anti-semitic. In some nurnburg opera, there's a singing competition in a medieval german town, and someone foreigner tries to win but botches the song.

  Wagner was the first to put the orchestra under the floor. The Opera houses where his pieces were played inspire most Opera houses today.

Music about other (i.e., not European) cultures. Didn't necessarily accurately represent the music from whatever region, but rather was the opposite of nationalist music: Nonstandard scales/modes, different instruments, "winding" melodies, etc.

One of the most popular ballet ever. Ballets frequently switched between a "human world" and a mystical or spiritual world. The human world part might be nationalist or exoticist. The spirit world might be at night in the woods. Women would frequently wear white and play as mystical creatures like fairies. "Pointe" is standing on the toes.

Swan lake in 1876 by Tchaikovsky. Prince Siegfried has a birthday in Act 1, then goes out hunting in the night for Act 2, where he meest a swan who becomes Odette, a beautiful woman princess who was trapped in a swan by a sorcerer. To be released, a man must truly fall in love with her (like Shrek!) and be true to her. Nobody speaks in a ballet, so people would have to read the program and understand "pantomime", basic gestures from the actors (that you can probably figure out even if you don't know them, like putting hands over the heart to indicate love). Additionally, many characters had a leitmotif: a motif for a certain character.

Act 3 is back to a ball celebrating the Prince's birthday. Combination of nationalist and exoticist music. Siegfried meets someone at the ball who looks just like Odette, and right there swears to marry her. But it's a decoy Odette, and his disloyalty to Odette condemns her (and many other swans) forever to life as a swan!

Act 4 is Siegfried trying to go back to the swan lake and right things. The original plot was that both Siegfried and Odette commit suicide and meet in heaven, but the original score for that part was lost, so composers a couple decades later adapted it. Since then there have been many different versions with different endings: Odette commits suicide but frees the other swans, the sorcerer being destroyed and releasing all the swans, Odette included, and any number of other endings.

The Work Concept: The original idea the composer had, which (in one school of thought) performers should try their best to replicate.

An "expressionist": wanted art to convey emotions as strongly as possible.

"Emancipation of Dissonance": Why should dissonance ever have to resolve? Can we not love dissonance without awaiting its end?

"Twelve-Tone System": More weird sounds?

Russian. Eventually moved to west Europe. Rite of Spring was a popular work, about how the industrial revolution had dulled the human spirit. It was about a return to a nationalist, almost prehistoric past. The "Rite" that's the work's namesake? Sacrificing people every spring. Frequently changed the time signature to confuse the audience. The work

"Neoclassicism": A term Stravinsky coined, weird mixing and matching of Galant stuff. Random dissonances and stuff too.

Schoenberg and Stravinsky were sorta opposites. Schoenberg was marching into the future, while Stravinsky was reexploring the past.

Modernism about machines, esp. trains and factories. This music was being made on the tail end of the industrial revolution, so it fits in with the idea of modernism music being about the new. Some music would glorify machines other music would demonize them.

Pacific 231!

Carlos Chávez: Good friend of Copland. Somewhat neoclassical. In 1932 made a ballet H.P where American workers go to Latin America to get minerals, and upon returning to their factories in the US, they rebel against their bosses. Musically, alternates between machine modernism to represent the US and mexican-ish music. Very late in the game, they changed the plot to be about a revolt against "materialism" instead of "capitalism" to avoid alienating the high-class audience Chávez expected.

1920s-30s. William Grant Still made an orchestral symphony "Afro-American" which took inspiration from blues, spirituals, and more.

Florence Price was from Little Rock, Arkansas. Rather than Harlem, she moved to Chicago. She also made a symphony which was played at a world fair. She used spiritual music and juba dance (a pre-civil-war style).

Started from neoclassicism and American folk. Created dissonances, but still in the scale. Often had large leaps in his music to make it seem more "spacious". Copland was politically pretty far left.

He was contracted to write the "Lincoln Portrait" after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; a propaganda piece. His knack for spacious music is a perfect fit for patriotic music imo.

Appalachian Spring was about working class people. He worked on it with someone recently released from a Japanese internment camp?

Schoenberg's kinda thinking. He thought music should be really abstract and nuts. However, some people wanted classical music to be easier for the middle class to understand.

In general, avant-garde music was less emotional and stuff.

Leonard Bernstein tried to bring classical music to the masses more, with his Young People's concerts and stuff.

Minimalism often builds on a single melody or something.

Steve Reich. He liked "phasing", having two identical, periodic melodies, one playing slightly faster than the other so they went in and out of sync.

Phillip Glass. "Additive". Would start with a really simple melody, and modify or add to it a bit.

Glass started to do some theatrical "operas", added some harmony, and minimalism got popular, especially in films. Some would call the more popular minimalism "postminimalism"

While modernism was about moving forward always, postmodernism questioned that. Often were against minimalism.

Many countries have "national" orchestras – not the US! Instead, orchestras here get a lot of money from philanthropy. Two notable philanthropic organizations in the past were the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. The National Endowment for the Arts showed up in the 1960s, and is publicly funded. All of give grants to orchestras, when those orchestras give a good proposal. The institutions have "expert panels" who evaluate the grant requests in their area of expertise. These expert panels would often be biased towards the type of music the composers on the panel wrote themselves.

The 60s was sort of a heyday for funding from philanthropists; there's much less available today. Smaller ensembles have popped up that are more albe to fund themselves through ticket sales.

First did jazz on piano. Often does stuff about racial issues. Central Park Five came out just in 2019. It's about five teenagers who were arrested for the killing of someone in central park. None of them did it but were all convicted. The eldest spent 13 years in prison. Davis' opera is sort've a documentary.

Not related to the musical technique, but rather: The set of historical classical music that's considered permanently good; the "classics". If you go to the Seattle Symphony, you're most likely listening to canon.

The concept started in the 1800s when the Schumanns started revering music by dead composers.

Canon isn't just ancient music – it includes lots of 20th century stuff by people like Stravinsky.

The League of American Orchestras keeps a list of the most played composers and pieces. #1: Pictures at an Exhibition!

Played a few instruments as a kid: Piano, violin, and the trombone, which he liked the most. Holst's father, Adolph von Holst, was a composer and pianist. His whole family was full of musicians and other artists.

Holst studied composition at the Royal College of Music (and Stanford?). He was a massive fan of Wagner, but also Walt Whitman and William Morris. He conducted the "Hammersmith Socialist Choir"?

He played the trombone professionally for some time in college.

Holst was the head of music at St. Paul's Girls' school from 1905 until death. He did lots of other teaching and was even a director of music at Morley college. His teaching is the main way he got by.

Composed a couple sanskrit operas just before 1910.

Holst was very much an introvert; he's the opposite of Liszt. He composed his songs despite what people wanted, not because of it.

Many of Holst's early works were for salons. Then, he made a few heavily Wagner-inspired operas.

Holst didn't like to "theorize" about music. To quote, "a composer is usually quite unconscious of what is going on".

Holst isn't so different than me: After doing a piece, he would be reluctant to make a similar piece again. He felt a compulsion to make things new and original, even to the detriment of his pieces. He never tried to emulate the style of the Planets, and accordingly never recreated its success either.

The other article indicates that Holst become very disappointed when his works weren't popular.

ostinato: A very short motif, whose rhythm may be more important than its notes, that's repeated way more often than a motif. Holst liked to use these in many of his compositions. At 36 seconds in the london symphony recording, the string ostinato can be heard. A different one is around 1:07 and lasts for a long time, building and switching instruments.

Bitonality and polytonality: Use of multiple keys at once. Holst was excellent at this.

Holst can definitely be described as a modernist. Modernism was mainly popular in mainland Europe, so Holst was quite the exception.

Holst was raised under a some sort of "Theosophy", a slightly occult religion with large inspiration from Eastern religions (India and stuff). Many of Holst's friends were more involved even than he. Holst played at an "occultist" meeting. Today it might be described as supernatural. Indeed, Holst was partial to lots of weird stuff like Phrenology. Astrology came naturally to him.

An astrological book published by a friend of a friend, The Art of Synthesis, may have been Holst's inspiration to write the planets. It was published in 1912, two years before Holst got into the thick of working on Planets. Holst admitted he started thinking about Planets two years before he really started working, which lines up. Furthermore, each chapter of The Art of Synthesis was named after a planet in similar style to the names of the pieces, and one chapter was even named "Neptune: The Mystic"!

Holst is also known to have owned How to Judge a Nativity.

Planets are neither heliocentric nor geocentric. The paper's author suggests they are organized from youth to old age.

Composed from 1913-16, with Mars completed in 1914. It was first performed in 1918, and it became famous quite immediately, despite not being played for a public audience until 1920.

The last of the suite to be composed, in 1916.

According to How to Judge a Nativity: "The Winged Messenger" … "The silver thread of memory, upon which are strung the beads which represent the personalities of its earth lives". Mercury is also the Thinker in some other books.

6/8 time. Called a "scherzo": A lively piece usually in 3/4 or 6/8. Maybe a replacement for the minuet?

He learned the trombone as a child to help cure his asthma?

After being rejected from Trinity College (of Music), he went to see a phrenologist.