Titles Flashcards
(176 cards)
Alleluia Pascha Nostrum
A hymn sometimes used by Christians during Easter season. The title is Latin for “Our Passover,” (Middle Ages)
Sederunt principes (4-v)
One of only three surviving four-part organa. It is one of two attributed to the medieval French composer Perotinus (fl c.1200). It is notated in the very early mensural rhythmic notation called rhythmic modes, which causes it to be in what we would consider compound meter. (Middle Ages)
Messe de Notre Dame
a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by a French poet, composer Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377). This was one of the great masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music; it is historically notable as the earliest complete setting of the Ordinary of the Mass attributable to a single composer (Middle Ages)
Sumer is icumen in
a medieval English rota (type of round) of the mid-13th century.
The title translates approximately to “Summer Has Come In” or “Summer Has Arrived”.[1] The song is composed in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. Although the composer’s identity is unknown today, it may have been W. de Wycombe. The year of composition is estimated to be ca. 1260. (Middle Ages)
Nuper rosarum flores
(“Recently Flowers of Roses/The Rose Blossoms Recently”), is a motet composed by Guillaume Dufay for the 25 March 1436 consecration of the Florence cathedral. The motet presents homographic tenors and is not an isorhythmic motet as often presented, since there are no isorythms in its compositional proceedings (Bent 2008). The motet is striking for its synthesis of the older isorhythmic style and the new contrapuntal style that Dufay himself would explore further in the coming decades (Renaissance)
Missa Se la face ay pale
Guillaume Dufay composed the ballade Se la face ay pale in the 1430s, perhaps for a Savoy wedding in 1434. Its courtly text speaks in clever, punning rhymes of the pale-faced, dejected lover. (Renaissance)
Missa Mi-mi
From its composition in the fifteenth century until 1985, a reasonably well-documented mass by Johannes Ockeghem was known only by the mysterious title Missa MyMy [Mi-Mi] Three manuscripts in the Vatican Library, copied between around 1480 and 1503, preserve copies of the Mass, and a copying record from the church of St. Donatian in Bruges from 1475-1476 may refer to the same piece. (Renaissance)
Missa prolationum
a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, by Johannes Ockeghem, dating from the second half of the 15th century. Based on freely written material probably composed by Ockeghem himself, and consisting entirely of mensuration canons,[1] it has been called “perhaps the most extraordinary contrapuntal achievement of the fifteenth century”, and was possibly the first multi-part work to be written which used a unifying canonic principle for all its movements. (Renaissance)
Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae
a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass composed by Josquin des Prez, and dedicated to Ercole d’Este I, Duke of Ferrara. The musical source material for the mass, the cantus firmus, is derived from the musical letters in the Duke’s name, a technique called soggetto cavato. (Renaissance)
Pope Marcellus Mass
a mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. It is his most well-known and most often-performed mass, and is frequently taught in university courses on music. It was always sung at the Papal Coronation Mass (the last being the coronation of Paul VI in 1963). (Rennaissance)
Cruda Amarilli
madrigal (genre of secular music) for 5 voices (from Book 5…there were 9), SV 94 - Claudio Monteverdi [interesting note - Canon Artusi published a book in 1600 that was a passionate attack on progressive tendencies in the music of the day. Cruda Amarilli, which has a number of new harmonic devices, is one of the negative examples he calls on to make his point.] (Early and Middle Baroque)
The Triumphs of Oriana
a book of English madrigals, compiled and published in 1601 by Thomas Morley, which first edition[1] has 25 pieces by 23 composers (Thomas Morley and Ellis Gibbons have two madrigals). It was said to have been made in the honour of Queen Elizabeth I. Every madrigal in the collection contains the following couplet at the end: “Thus sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: long live fair Oriana” (the word “Oriana” often being used to refer to Queen Elizabeth). (Early and Middle Baroque)
Flow, my tears
a lute song (specifically, an “ayre”) by the accomplished lutenist and composer John Dowland.
Originally composed as an instrumental under the name Lachrimae pavane in 1596, it is Dowland’s most famous ayre,[1] and became his signature song, literally as well as metaphorically: he would occasionally sign his name “Jo. Dolandi de Lachrimae”. (Early baroque)
L’Orfeo
sometimes called L’Orfeo, favola in musica, is a late Renaissance/early Baroque opera by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. Written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua, L’Orfeo is one of the earliest music dramas still regularly performed.(Early and Middle Baroque)
L’incoronazione di Poppea
an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it is based primarily on the Annals of Tacitus and describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nerone (Nero), is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. (Early and Middle Baroque)
Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda
an operatic scena for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi, although many dispute how the piece should be classified. The piece has a libretto drawn from Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”, Canto XII, 52-62, 64-68), a Romance set against the backdrop of the First Crusade. Il Combattimento was first produced in 1624 but not printed until 1638, when it appeared with several other pieces in Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals (written over a period of many years). (Early and Middle Baroque)
In ecclesiis (polychoral)
Giovanni Gabrieli’s magnum opus and most famous single work. A masterpiece of polychoral techniques, it also epitomises Baroque and Renaissance styles, with its prolific use of pedal points and extended plagal cadences.
Written while Gabrieli was the organist at St Mark’s Basilica, Venice, the music was designed to be performed in this unique building. The individual groups of musicians and singers would have been spatially separated around the grand architecture creating a polychoral, antiphonal texture that is difficult to replicate in modern performances. (1585-1600) (Renaissance)
Jephtha
an oratorio (1751) by Handel with a libretto by the Rev. Thomas Morell, based on the story of Jephtha in Judges (Chapter 11) and Jephthas sive votum - “Jeptha or the Vow” (1554) by George Buchanan. (High Baroque)
Symphoniae sacrae
by Giovanni Gabrieli. (Late renaissance/Early Baroque)
Saul, was verfolgst du mich
part of Symphoniae sacrae III by Schultz circa 1650 (Early and Middle Baroque)
Dido and Aeneas
an opera in a prologue and three acts, written by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell with a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid.[2] It recounts the love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, for the Trojan hero Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. (Early and Middle Baroque)
The Well-Tempered Clavier
a collection of solo keyboard music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. He first gave the title to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, dated 1722, composed “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.” Bach later compiled a second book of the same kind, dated 1742, but titled it only “Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.” The two works are now usually considered to make up a single work, The Well-Tempered Clavier, or “the 48,” and are referred to respectively as Books I and II. (High Baroque)
L’Art de toucher le clavecin
a didactic treatise by the French composer François Couperin. It was first published in 1716, and was followed by a revised edition in 1717.The treatise was written to instruct keyboard players in performance practice, particularly for Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin; Couperin, upon its publication, noted that it was “absolutely indispensable for playing my Pièces in the style most suitable to them”. (High Baroque)
Twelve solo sonatas, Op.5
Arcangelo Corelli wrote it for violin and continuo. (6 sonate da chiesa and 6 sonate da camera for violin and continuo) (Rome 1700) The last sonata is a set of variations on La Folia. (High Baroque)
