Musical historicism
Encyclopedia
Musical historicism signifies the use of historical materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, conceptual content, etc., whether by a single composer or those associated with a particular school, movement, or period. Musical historicism
is evident to a greater or lesser degree in the music of all periods beginning with the Middle Ages and continuing through the present.
Musical historicism also denotes a theory
, doctrine
, or aesthetic that emphasizes the importance of music history
or in which history is seen as a standard of value or determining factor (as in performance practice).
, who disliked modern music and strongly preferred the works of Bach, Mozart, and Schubert, spoke of "the failure of the historicist propaganda for the modern in music." He opposed the socioscientific doctrine of historicism
that discoverable laws of historical change make it possible to predict future developments. Repudiating the claim that Schoenberg was "an inevitable historical force", Popper dismissed the idea of producing art work "ahead of its time" (Gopnik 2002).
When referring to the arts, however, the term "historicism" generally denotes something distinctly different from the historicism targeted by Popper's critique. It designates "a style (as in architecture) characterized by the use of traditional forms and elements." (Merriam-Webster 2003). Historicism stands in contrast to modernism
, "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression" (Merriam-Webster 2003). However, it should be noted that "historicism", thus defined, does not necessarily exclude such recently established traditions as atonality
, whose earliest use can be dated to 1908 (the finale of Schoenberg's second string quartet). Nor does it exclude the possibility of strong historical influences in modernist works of art.
Another difficulty stems from the fact that distinguishing between the old and the new in music is not as straightforward a process as it might seem. The modernist music of Schoenberg, for example, draws abundantly on traditional elements and techniques, including the twelve tones of the chromatic scale
, consonance and dissonance
, variation
, inversion
, and retrograde
, as well as traditional forms such as the concerto
, suite
, string quartet
, string trio
, symphony
, and wind quintet
, and sometimes is dependent on historical conceptual content (e.g., the biblical traditions undergirding Moses und Aron
). Whereas the historicism of the Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute (1917–31) by Ottorino Respighi is readily apparent to the ear, since the composer drew directly on the works of 16th- and 17th-century composers, the historicism informing the Music of Changes
(1951) by John Cage, based on the ancient Chinese I Ching
, is deeply embedded in the compositional process (Tomkins 1976, 111–12).
The study of history and historical influence also raises fundamental questions about the nature of time. Many physicists, including Einstein, have maintained that the familiar division of time into past, present, and future is an illusion, from which it necessarily follows that "old" and "new" are terms as relative as "up" and "down" (Davies 2006, 9). Since concepts of time and history and the average lifespans of human beings living in different periods and cultures are variable, these, too, are factors that must also be considered.
These problems notwithstanding, even a superficial look at history reveals that historicism played a significant role in the creation of new music long before the stimulus afforded by the rise of musicology
and the widespread publication and dissemination of modern editions and recordings of earlier music.
by a single composer, the Messe de Nostre Dame
(before 1365) by Guillaume de Machaut
, the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" and "Credo in unum Deum" are still sung in plainsong. The Kyrie
freely follows the structure of the liturgical melody it borrows in the tenor
voice part. The Sanctus
and Agnus Dei are also based on earlier chants. In the Credo
, a plainsong
melody is paraphrased in the motetus voice.
After Machaut's death in 1377, his life and music were commemorated in Armes amours / O flour des flours, a déploration in the form of a four-part double ballade
with text by Eustache Deschamps
and music by François Andrieu
. The earliest known in a series of such musical memorials that allude to the styles of deceased composers, at the words "La mort Machaut" Andrieu deliberately imitates the sustained chordal style heard in the Gloria
and Credo
of Machaut's earlier Messe de Nostre Dame
. This practice of alluding to the style of a deceased composer would establish a tradition that has continued for centuries (cf. Mort tu as navré by Johannes Ockeghem
, composed in memory of Gilles Binchois
; Nymphes des bois
by Josquin des Prez
, composed in memory of Ockeghem; the two apothéoses
in memory of Jean-Baptiste Lully
and Arcangelo Corelli
composed by François Couperin
; and Le Tombeau de Couperin
composed by Maurice Ravel
).
The legacy of medieval historicism has been considerable. For example, works incorporating a particular plainsong
continued to be composed hundreds of years after the borrowed chant itself first appeared. Among the best known examples of this kind are compositions in which the familiar "Dies irae
" sequence
, taken from the Latin Requiem
Mass, figures prominently. Written in the late Middle Ages and attributed to Thomas of Celano
(d. 1256), this chant was set polyphonically by Antoine Brumel
in the mid 16th century, but is best known to audiences today as a prominent inclusion in numerous 19th- and 20th-century scores, among them the finale of the Symphonie fantastique
by Hector Berlioz
, the Totentanz and Dante Symphony
of Franz Liszt
, the Danse macabre
of Camille Saint-Saëns
, and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
by Sergei Rachmaninoff
.
The practice of hymn-singing in the vernacular would set in motion an historical tradition that would resonate with composers for centuries to come. Among the first nations to embrace devotional singing of this kind was Germany, where Latin sequences were sung in German from around the beginning of the 14th century. The German Protestant hymn or chorale
, in whose long development the names of Martin Luther
and Johann Sebastian Bach
(see below) loom large, was a direct outgrowth of medieval German hymnody.
Strongly influenced by the charismatic example of St. Francis of Assisi, a type of vernacular hymn
known as the laude
emerged in the 13th century that set in motion a musico-historical tradition that would endure into the 19th century. Various Companie de Laudesi were eventually established to encourage devotional singing in Italian among everyday people, and the musical and theatrical performances that took place in their halls would give rise by the late 16th century (along with the liturgical drama
and mystery play
) to the oratorio
.
The quodlibet
, which traces its origins to the medieval practice of placing various preexisting textual or melodic materials in different voice parts, would also reverberate through the centuries. In late medieval examples, the borrowed materials thus juxtaposed could be both sacred (plainsong) and/or secular (e.g., trouvère
tunes or folksong), sometimes producing incongruously humorous effects. This technique would engage the interest of German composers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and culminated in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach
, the last (no. 30) of whose Goldberg Variations
quotes
two popular early 18th-century melodies. (See also centonization
.) A 20th century example of this medieval technique is heard in the Cantate de Noël of Arthur Honegger
, written for the Selzacher Passionsspiel, in a section of which four different carols are heard simultaneously.
Canon
as a compositional technique has been embraced by composers of both vocal and instrumental music since the 13th century. (Canonic imitation) is evident in both the medieval motet
and caccia mass, but today the best-known example of medieval canon is undoubtedly Sumer is icumen in
, a rota
which itself has influenced numerous composers in subsequent periods, among them Johannes Brahms
, who imitated its structure in his own Canon, op. 113, no. 13, and a group of British composers (Oliver Knussen
, Robert Saxton
, Robin Holloway
, Judith Weir
, Alexander Goehr
, Colin Matthews
and David Bedford
) who collaboratively composed a large set of Variations on "Sumer is icumen" in 1987. Closely related canonic types are the French chace and the Italian caccia, the latter being one of the earliest examples in a long history of musical works evoking the hunt.
Another important unifying device that emerged in the 13th century was the ostinato
, a particular musical phrase that is "obstinately" repeated in succession. The tenor
or pes
in "Sumer is icumen in
" is an ostinato, and many later examples can be found in 16th-century dance music and the ostinato motet. More recent usages of ostinato occur in the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor of Johann Sebastian Bach
(BWV 582); the Berceuse
, op. 57 of Frédéric Chopin
; and the fourth movement of the Konzert, op. 38, of Paul Hindemith
.
. The term "Renaissance", which entered the English language before the second half of the 19th century, is taken directly from the French word meaning "rebirth", since, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, these two centuries represented "the great revival of art and letters, under the influence of classical models, which began in Italy in the fourteenth century and continued during the fifteenth and sixteenth." In this light, the Renaissance as a whole was a period in which historicism was the dominant mode of artistic creativity.
Some forms of historicist practice met with little immediate success. Nicola Vicentino
, author of L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice, 1555), set about to revive the lost chromatic and enharmonic genera of Greek music theory
through the invention of the arcicembalo and the arciorgano—keyboards furnished with six manuals whose octaves were subdivided into thirty-one keys, thus allowing for the performance of music composed in half-steps and microtones. (Microtonal composition, however, has been revived by numerous twentieth- and 21st-century composers, including Charles Ives
, Alois Hába
, Harry Partch
, and Krzystof Penderecki.)
Renaissance historicism was a primary catalyst for the revolutionary stylistic changes that led, among other things, to the creation of opera
. In their attempts to emulate the mythical powers of ancient music, Jacopo Peri
and his 16th-century contemporaries, with little more to stimulate their imaginations than extant literary works and treatises, pictorial representations, and other indirect evidence, sought to imitate through appropriate musical means the ideas and emotions suggested by newly composed dramatic poetry based on Classical models. Peri's now fragmentary Dafne
is widely regarded as the first true opera.
Considerable controversy had arisen about the best way to realize Classical musical ideals. Girolamo Mei
and Vincenzo Galilei
, antiquarian theorists affiliated, like Peri, with the Florentine Camerata
, contended that the ancient Greeks obtained their marvelous musical effects through melody alone, and were prepared to abandon polyphony entirely in the belief that its "diverse and contrary parts" would obscure the meaning and efficacy of the texts chosen to be set. Although he never took such a radical course in his own music, Claudio Monteverdi
, on the authority of Plato's Republic, still believed that words should be "the mistress of the harmony and not the servant." Like his earlier and later contemporaries, the subject matter of his three surviving operatic masterpieces — L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
, and L'incoronazione di Poppea
— is drawn from Classical mythology
and history.
The literary Italian madrigal
of the 14th century freely served as a model for Renaissance authors, whose creative efforts, in turn, would inspire their composer contemporaries, including Jacob Arcadelt, Philippe Verdelot
, and Adrian Willaert
. The 16th-century revival of the madrigal, first in Italy and later in England, owed little or nothing to Trecento
musical styles. Frequently provided with an amatory text and written in five or six imitative voice parts, by the early 17th century the madrigal had developed into an extremely sophisticated type, particularly in the hands of Carlo Gesualdo
, Claudio Monteverdi
, William Byrd
and Thomas Morley
. Monteverdi's late madrigals increasingly take on the character of monody
, a style resulting from deliberate attempts by the Florentine Camerata
to rediscover the music of the ancient Greeks. Although the madrigal subsequently fell out of fashion, it was revived by Arthur Sullivan
, Edward German
, and, in a modern orchestral context, by Bernard Rands
.
At the beginning of the 17th century composers were still using traditional bass and harmonic patterns and dance types originating as early as the late 15th century as the basis of new music. The romanesca
, which inspired numerous dance variations and vocal improvisations, attracted composers as late as Claudio Monteverdi
, and Salomone Rossi. The harmonic pattern of the folia
, a dance probably of 15th-century Portuguese origin, continued to hold the interest of composers not only in the 17th and 18th centuries, among them Marin Marais
, Archangelo Corelli, and Johann Sebastian Bach
, but in the nineteenth, twentieth, and early 21st centuries as well, including Franz Liszt
, Sergei Rachmaninoff
, Carl Nielsen
, and David Solomons
. Other renaissance variation and dance types that continued to be used by post-renaissance composers include the canzona
and canzonet (e.g., those in the Années de pèlerinage
of Franz Liszt
); chaconne
or passacaglia
(e.g., the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony and act 4, scene 5 of the opera Wozzeck
by Alban Berg
); pavane
(Pavane pour une infante défunte
by Maurice Ravel
); and moresca
or Morris dance
.
An important 16th-century ancestor (along with the canzona
) of the fugue
, the ricercare occupied an important place in the keyboard works of Girolamo Cavazzoni
, Claudio Merulo
, and Antonio Frescobaldi. It would reach its zenith in J. S. Bach's Musikalisches Opfer (1747), and would be revived in the 20th century by Bohuslav Martinů
, Antonio Casella, and Igor Stravinsky
(Cantata
, 1951–52, based on a medieval text).
The intimate relationship between music and dance that existed in Greek drama was remembered and renewed during the Renaissance
and early Baroque
with the development of the ballet
. Although little had survived of the music of Classical drama, courtly festivities featuring music, dance, costume, and stagecraft grew increasingly elaborate in the 15th and 16th centuries, and by the 17th century the French court, under the patronage of the "Sun King" Louis XIV, ushered in the first great age of ballet (see also Ballet Comique de la Reine
, ballet de cour, balletto a cavallo, boutade, carrousel
, danse equestre, intermezzo
, mascarade, trionfo
). Jean-Baptiste Lully
created music for a variety of new courtly dance types that would become highly stylized and find their way into the suite
, sonata
, and symphony
of later centuries (e.g., the minuet
). Lully also introduced the ballet into French opera
, in which subject matter drawn from ancient myth, legend, and history was predominant (see also opéra ballet). In England, the masque
fulfilled a similar courtly function. Composers such as Henry Purcell
(Dido and Aeneas
), Christoph Willibald Gluck
(Orphée et Eurydice), and Ludwig van Beethoven
(The Creatures of Prometheus
) variously sustained this classically inspired tradition, which has endured into modern times in such works as Job: A Masque for Dancing by Ralph Vaughan Williams
, Bacchus et Ariane by Albert Roussel
, Apollon musagète by Igor Stravinsky
, and Harmonie der Welt by Paul Hindemith
. (Many modern ballets have also been based on preexisting scores inspired by Classical themes, e.g., the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
of Claude Debussy
was transformed into a one-act ballet by Sergei Diaghilev
.)
In the field of sacred music, the Mass
continued to provide a variety of opportunities for composers to create new works while respecting ties to centuries-old musical traditions. The items of the Gregorian plainsong mass could be set polyphonically and performed in accordance with established liturgical cycles. All the movements of a cantus firmus mass could be based on a single Gregorian melody (or even a preexisting secular tune), which was usually heard in the tenor
. In some masses, the borrowed melody was distributed among the various voice parts, freely varied, or paraphrased with great imaginative skill, as in the Missa Pange lingua
(c. 1520) of Josquin des Prez
, based on a 13th-century hymn attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas
. Tenor melodies could also be "carved out" of the vowels of a name or short text using the solmization
syllables derived from the 11th century Guidonian hexachord
, or the hexachord itself might serve in the same capacity, as in the Missa Ut re mi fa sol la of Palestrina
. Relatively few masses used a newly invented cantus firmus
, whereas one of the most frequent types, the parody mass
, was composed of various parts and sections from preexisting polyphonic works.
and his contemporaries incorporated traditional chorale
melodies into numerous of their major works in such genres as the cantata
, chorale prelude
, chorale fantasia
, chorale fugue, chorale motet
, chorale variations, oratorio
, and Passion
. Like composers before them, Johannes Brahms
and Max Reger
composed variations
on themes taken from earlier composers (e.g., Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel
, op. 24, and Variations on a Theme by Haydn, op. 56a; and Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, op. 81, and Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart
, op. 132). Stravinsky derived much of the musical material for his Pulcinella
from the work of various eighteenth composers.
Creating new music that closely follows the style of an earlier composer or period has provided a creative outlet for both major and minor masters. Mozart, whose music was richly informed by his contact with the antiquarian music circle of Baron Gottfried van Swieten
, exhibited a particular gift for the baroque style in such works as his Suite in C Major (sometimes subtitled "in the style of Handel"), KV 399 (385i), which includes an ouverture, allemande, and courante. (A fragmentary sarabande and Eine kleine Gigue, K. 574 also document his skill as an historicist composer.) In a letter to his father of 7 February 1778, he proudly states, "As you know, I can more or less adopt or imitate any kind and any style of composition" (Solomon 1995, 119).
A more eclectic approach to historicism in which multiple historical style influences are evident was adopted by Louis Spohr
in his Symphony No. 6 in G Major, op. 116 ("Historical") "in the Style and Taste of Four Different Periods": 1. Bach-Handel'sche Periode, 1720, Largo - Grave; 2. Haydn-Mozart'sche Periode, 1780, Larghetto; 3. Beethoven'sche Periode, 1810, Scherzo; and 4. Allerneueste Periode ["very latest Period"], 1840, Allegro vivace. Though not characteristic of his later style, Sergei Prokofiev
paid tribute not only to the "classicism" of Haydn but also to the baroque gavotte in his Symphony No. 1 in D Major, op. 25 ("Classical").
The fusion of historical and emergent styles, forms, techniques, and content in a given work is encountered with great frequency in the music of most periods. The fugue
, for example, whose origins can be traced to the imitative counterpoint
of the late Middle Ages
and which reached full maturity in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach
, figures prominently in the musical styles of a number of important composers in the 19th century and beyond, including Beethoven
, Mendelssohn
(whose early works were modelled on symphonies of C. P. E. Bach), Reger
(whose works for solo cello, viola or violin closely imitate Bachian forms), Shostakovich
, and Hindemith
.
A closely related instrumental genre that first appeared in the late Renaissance, the toccata
achieved particular prominence in the keyboard works of Buxtehude
and J.S. Bach and has since been revived by such distinguished composers as Schumann
, Debussy
, and Prokofiev
.
Other romantic and early 20th century composers among the many who demonstrated either explicit or implicit historicist affinities are Barber
, Bartók
, Britten
, Marius Casadesus
, Chávez
, Ferdinand David
, Fauré
, François-Joseph Fétis
, Grieg
, d'Indy
, Ives
, Kreisler
, Paderewski
, Pfitzner
, Manuel Ponce, Poulenc
, Respighi
, Satie
, Sibelius
, Vaughan Williams
, and Wagner
.
In the 20th century Carl Orff
attempted a revival of ancient Greek practices of musical theater (he also regularly contributed his own texts in Latin
and Ancient Greek
to his own musical works).
Given that tonality
itself is deeply rooted in pre-modernist historical traditions, tonal types of minimalism
, post-minimalism, and contemporary world music
may all be subsumed in varying degrees under the rubric of historicism.
Interest in musical historicism has been spurred by the emergence of such international organizations as the Delian Society
, dedicated to the revitalization of tonal art music, and Vox Saeculorum
, whose composer members have a specialized interest in baroque idioms (Colburn 2007).
Some contemporary historicist composers, similar to the 18th-century literary figures Thomas Chatterton
, James MacPherson
(the Ossian
poems), and Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), have written under a pseudepigraphic ascription, attributing their work to other composers, either real or imaginary. These include Winfried Michel
, author of the impressive "Haydn Forgeries" (Beckerman 1994; Lindskoog 1996) and Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
, whose original lute
and viola da gamba compositions in the baroque style were sufficiently convincing to be mistaken for works by masters of the composer's own mythopoeic invention (Colburn 2007), and led to accusations of "trivializing musicology" (Smith 2002).
Historicism (art)
Historicism refers to artistic styles that draw their inspiration from copying historic styles or artisans. After neo-classicism, which could itself be considered a historicist movement, the 19th century saw a new historicist phase marked by a return to a more ancient classicism, in particular in...
is evident to a greater or lesser degree in the music of all periods beginning with the Middle Ages and continuing through the present.
Musical historicism also denotes a theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
, doctrine
Doctrine
Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system...
, or aesthetic that emphasizes the importance of music history
Music history
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is the highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies the composition, performance, reception, and criticism of music over time...
or in which history is seen as a standard of value or determining factor (as in performance practice).
Meaning of "musical historicism"
The term "historicism" has acquired various, sometimes confusing meanings over a wide range of disciplines. The British philosopher Karl PopperKarl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, who disliked modern music and strongly preferred the works of Bach, Mozart, and Schubert, spoke of "the failure of the historicist propaganda for the modern in music." He opposed the socioscientific doctrine of historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
that discoverable laws of historical change make it possible to predict future developments. Repudiating the claim that Schoenberg was "an inevitable historical force", Popper dismissed the idea of producing art work "ahead of its time" (Gopnik 2002).
When referring to the arts, however, the term "historicism" generally denotes something distinctly different from the historicism targeted by Popper's critique. It designates "a style (as in architecture) characterized by the use of traditional forms and elements." (Merriam-Webster 2003). Historicism stands in contrast to modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression" (Merriam-Webster 2003). However, it should be noted that "historicism", thus defined, does not necessarily exclude such recently established traditions as atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
, whose earliest use can be dated to 1908 (the finale of Schoenberg's second string quartet). Nor does it exclude the possibility of strong historical influences in modernist works of art.
Another difficulty stems from the fact that distinguishing between the old and the new in music is not as straightforward a process as it might seem. The modernist music of Schoenberg, for example, draws abundantly on traditional elements and techniques, including the twelve tones of the chromatic scale
Chromatic scale
The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone apart. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the half steps are the same size...
, consonance and dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
, variation
Variation (music)
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.-Variation form:...
, inversion
Inversion (music)
In music theory, the word inversion has several meanings. There are inverted chords, inverted melodies, inverted intervals, and inverted voices...
, and retrograde
Retrograde (music)
A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans. An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse. An even more exact retrograde reverses the physical contour of the notes themselves, though this is...
, as well as traditional forms such as the concerto
Concerto
A concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
, suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
, string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
, string trio
String trio
A string trio is a group of three string instruments or a piece written for such a group. The term is generally used with reference to works of chamber music from the Classical period to the present.-History:...
, symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, and wind quintet
Wind quintet
A wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players . The term also applies to a composition for such a group....
, and sometimes is dependent on historical conceptual content (e.g., the biblical traditions undergirding Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.-Compositional history:...
). Whereas the historicism of the Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute (1917–31) by Ottorino Respighi is readily apparent to the ear, since the composer drew directly on the works of 16th- and 17th-century composers, the historicism informing the Music of Changes
Music of Changes
Music of Changes is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for pianist and friend David Tudor, it is Cage's earliest fully indeterminate instrumental work. The process of composition involved applying decisions made using the I Ching, a Chinese classic text that is commonly used as a...
(1951) by John Cage, based on the ancient Chinese I Ching
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...
, is deeply embedded in the compositional process (Tomkins 1976, 111–12).
The study of history and historical influence also raises fundamental questions about the nature of time. Many physicists, including Einstein, have maintained that the familiar division of time into past, present, and future is an illusion, from which it necessarily follows that "old" and "new" are terms as relative as "up" and "down" (Davies 2006, 9). Since concepts of time and history and the average lifespans of human beings living in different periods and cultures are variable, these, too, are factors that must also be considered.
These problems notwithstanding, even a superficial look at history reveals that historicism played a significant role in the creation of new music long before the stimulus afforded by the rise of musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
and the widespread publication and dissemination of modern editions and recordings of earlier music.
Middle ages
The historicist practice of including traditional melodies or fragments thereof in new compositions had become particularly widespread by the late medieval period. In the first complete polyphonic setting of the MassMass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
by a single composer, the Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by the French poet, composer and cleric Guillaume de Machaut...
(before 1365) by Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....
, the "Gloria in excelsis Deo" and "Credo in unum Deum" are still sung in plainsong. The Kyrie
Kyrie
Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek κύριε , vocative case of κύριος , meaning "Lord", is the common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, which is also called the Kýrie, eléison ....
freely follows the structure of the liturgical melody it borrows in the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
voice part. The Sanctus
Sanctus
The Sanctus is a hymn from Christian liturgy, forming part of the Order of Mass. In Western Christianity, the Sanctus is sung as the final words of the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer, the prayer of consecration of the bread and wine...
and Agnus Dei are also based on earlier chants. In the Credo
Credo
A credo |Latin]] for "I Believe") is a statement of belief, commonly used for religious belief, such as the Apostles' Creed. The term especially refers to the use of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in the Mass, either as text, Gregorian chant, or other musical settings of the...
, a plainsong
Plainsong
Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...
melody is paraphrased in the motetus voice.
After Machaut's death in 1377, his life and music were commemorated in Armes amours / O flour des flours, a déploration in the form of a four-part double ballade
Ballade
The ballade is a form of French poetry. It was one of the three formes fixes and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries....
with text by Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps
Eustache Deschamps was a medieval French poet, also known as Eustache Morel . Born at Vertus, in Champagne, he received lessons in versification from Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orleans University. He then traveled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V...
and music by François Andrieu
François Andrieu
François Andrieu was a composer, most likely French, of the late 14th century. Nothing is known about him except that he wrote an elegy on the death of Guillaume de Machaut , a four-voice ballade Armes amours / O flour des flours, which is contained in the Chantilly Codex...
. The earliest known in a series of such musical memorials that allude to the styles of deceased composers, at the words "La mort Machaut" Andrieu deliberately imitates the sustained chordal style heard in the Gloria
Gloria in Excelsis Deo
"Gloria in excelsis Deo" is the title and beginning of a hymn known also as the Greater Doxology and the Angelic Hymn. The name is often abbreviated to Gloria in Excelsis or simply Gloria.It is an example of the psalmi idiotici "Gloria in excelsis Deo" (Latin for "Glory to God in the highest")...
and Credo
Credo
A credo |Latin]] for "I Believe") is a statement of belief, commonly used for religious belief, such as the Apostles' Creed. The term especially refers to the use of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in the Mass, either as text, Gregorian chant, or other musical settings of the...
of Machaut's earlier Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by the French poet, composer and cleric Guillaume de Machaut...
. This practice of alluding to the style of a deceased composer would establish a tradition that has continued for centuries (cf. Mort tu as navré by Johannes Ockeghem
Johannes Ockeghem
Johannes Ockeghem was the most famous composer of the Franco-Flemish School in the last half of the 15th century, and is often considered the most...
, composed in memory of Gilles Binchois
Gilles Binchois
Gilles de Binche , also known as Gilles de Bins , was a Franco-Flemish composer, one of the earliest members of the Burgundian School, and one of the three most famous composers of the early 15th century...
; Nymphes des bois
Nymphes des bois
Nymphes des bois, also known as La Déploration de Johannes Ockeghem, is a lament composed by Josquin des Prez on the occasion of the death of his predecessor Johannes Ockeghem in February 1497. The piece, based on a poem by Jean Molinet and including the funeral text Requiem Aeternam as a cantus...
by Josquin des Prez
Josquin Des Prez
Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...
, composed in memory of Ockeghem; the two apothéoses
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
in memory of Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
and Arcangelo Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli was an Italian violinist and composer of Baroque music.-Biography:Corelli was born at Fusignano, in the current-day province of Ravenna, although at the time it was in the province of Ferrara. Little is known about his early life...
composed by François Couperin
François Couperin
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...
; and Le Tombeau de Couperin
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Le tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of friends of the composer who had died fighting in World War I...
composed by Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
).
The legacy of medieval historicism has been considerable. For example, works incorporating a particular plainsong
Plainsong
Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...
continued to be composed hundreds of years after the borrowed chant itself first appeared. Among the best known examples of this kind are compositions in which the familiar "Dies irae
Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...
" sequence
Sequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
, taken from the Latin Requiem
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
Mass, figures prominently. Written in the late Middle Ages and attributed to Thomas of Celano
Thomas of Celano
Thomas of Celano was an Italian friar of the Franciscans , a poet, and the author of three hagiographies about Saint Francis of Assisi.Thomas was from Celano in Abruzzo...
(d. 1256), this chant was set polyphonically by Antoine Brumel
Antoine Brumel
Antoine Brumel was a French composer. He was one of the first renowned French members of the Franco-Flemish school of the Renaissance, and, after Josquin des Prez, was one of the most influential composers of his generation....
in the mid 16th century, but is best known to audiences today as a prominent inclusion in numerous 19th- and 20th-century scores, among them the finale of the Symphonie fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique
Symphonie Fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un Artiste...en cinq parties , Op. 14, is a program symphony written by the French composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. It is one of the most important and representative pieces of the early Romantic period, and is still very popular with concert audiences...
by Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, the Totentanz and Dante Symphony
Dante Symphony
A Symphony to Dante's Divine Comedy, S.109, or simply the "Dante Symphony", is a program symphony composed by Franz Liszt. Written in the high romantic style, it is based on Dante Alighieri's journey through Hell and Purgatory, as depicted in The Divine Comedy...
of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, the Danse macabre
Danse Macabre
Dance of Death, also variously called Danse Macabre , Danza de la Muerte , Dansa de la Mort , Danza Macabra , Dança da Morte , Totentanz , Dodendans , is an artistic genre of late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's...
of Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in A minor, Op. 43 is a concertante work written by Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is written for solo piano and symphony orchestra, closely resembling a piano concerto. The work was written at Villa Senar, according to the score, from July 3 to August 18, 1934...
by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
.
The practice of hymn-singing in the vernacular would set in motion an historical tradition that would resonate with composers for centuries to come. Among the first nations to embrace devotional singing of this kind was Germany, where Latin sequences were sung in German from around the beginning of the 14th century. The German Protestant hymn or chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
, in whose long development the names of Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
and Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
(see below) loom large, was a direct outgrowth of medieval German hymnody.
Strongly influenced by the charismatic example of St. Francis of Assisi, a type of vernacular hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
known as the laude
Laude
The lauda or lauda spirituale was the most important form of vernacular sacred song in Italy in the late medieval era and Renaissance. Laude remained popular into the nineteenth century....
emerged in the 13th century that set in motion a musico-historical tradition that would endure into the 19th century. Various Companie de Laudesi were eventually established to encourage devotional singing in Italian among everyday people, and the musical and theatrical performances that took place in their halls would give rise by the late 16th century (along with the liturgical drama
Liturgical drama
Liturgical drama or religious drama, in its various Christian contexts, originates from the mass itself, and usually presents a relatively complex ritual that includes theatrical elements...
and mystery play
Mystery play
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song...
) to the oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
.
The quodlibet
Quodlibet
A quodlibet is a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous manner...
, which traces its origins to the medieval practice of placing various preexisting textual or melodic materials in different voice parts, would also reverberate through the centuries. In late medieval examples, the borrowed materials thus juxtaposed could be both sacred (plainsong) and/or secular (e.g., trouvère
Trouvère
Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...
tunes or folksong), sometimes producing incongruously humorous effects. This technique would engage the interest of German composers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and culminated in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, the last (no. 30) of whose Goldberg Variations
Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a work for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, the work is considered to be one of the most important examples of variation form...
quotes
Musical quotation
Musical quotation is the practice of directly quoting another work in a new composition. The quotation may be from the same composer's work , or from a different composer's work ....
two popular early 18th-century melodies. (See also centonization
Centonization
In music centonization is a theory about the composition of a melody, melodies, or piece based on pre-existing melodic figures and formulas...
.) A 20th century example of this medieval technique is heard in the Cantate de Noël of Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
, written for the Selzacher Passionsspiel, in a section of which four different carols are heard simultaneously.
Canon
Canon (music)
In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
as a compositional technique has been embraced by composers of both vocal and instrumental music since the 13th century. (Canonic imitation) is evident in both the medieval motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
and caccia mass, but today the best-known example of medieval canon is undoubtedly Sumer is icumen in
Sumer Is Icumen In
"Sumer Is Icumen In" is a traditional English round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence. The title might be translated as "Summer has come in" or "Summer has arrived"....
, a rota
Rota (music)
A rota is a type of vocal round of the 13th and 14th centuries, probably only in England.In the rota, as opposed to the rondellus, the voices entered one at a time, each singing precisely what the previous voice sang, exactly as in the modern round...
which itself has influenced numerous composers in subsequent periods, among them Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
, who imitated its structure in his own Canon, op. 113, no. 13, and a group of British composers (Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen
Oliver Knussen CBE is a British composer and conductor.-Biography:Oliver Knussen was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Stuart Knussen, was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra. Oliver Knussen studied composition with John Lambert, between 1963 and 1969 and also received...
, Robert Saxton
Robert Saxton
-Biography:After early advice and encouragement from Benjamin Britten, Robert Saxton took private composition lessons with Elisabeth Lutyens. He went on to study with Robin Holloway at Cambridge University, with Robert Sherlaw Johnson as a post-graduate at Oxford University, and later with Berio....
, Robin Holloway
Robin Holloway
Robin Greville Holloway is an English composer.-Early life:From 1952 to 1957, he was a chorister at St Paul's Cathedral...
, Judith Weir
Judith Weir
Judith Weir CBE, is a British composer.-Biography:Her music has been appreciated by audiences and critics alike. She trained with John Tavener while still at school and subsequently with Robin Holloway at King's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1976...
, Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr
Alexander Goehr is an English composer and academic.Goehr was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor and Schoenberg pupil Walter Goehr. In his early twenties he emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. In 1955–56 he joined Oliver Messiaen's...
, Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews OBE is an English composer of classical music.-Early life and education:Matthews was born in London in 1946; his older brother is the composer David Matthews. He read classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and with Nicholas...
and David Bedford
David Bedford
David Vickerman Bedford , was an English composer and musician. He wrote and played both popular and classical music....
) who collaboratively composed a large set of Variations on "Sumer is icumen" in 1987. Closely related canonic types are the French chace and the Italian caccia, the latter being one of the earliest examples in a long history of musical works evoking the hunt.
Another important unifying device that emerged in the 13th century was the ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
, a particular musical phrase that is "obstinately" repeated in succession. The tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
or pes
PES
PES may refer to:*Packetized elementary stream, part of the MPEG communication protocol*Party of European Socialists*Payment for ecosystem services*Performance Enhancement Specialist, Issued by National Academy of Sports Medicine...
in "Sumer is icumen in
Sumer Is Icumen In
"Sumer Is Icumen In" is a traditional English round, and possibly the oldest such example of counterpoint in existence. The title might be translated as "Summer has come in" or "Summer has arrived"....
" is an ostinato, and many later examples can be found in 16th-century dance music and the ostinato motet. More recent usages of ostinato occur in the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
(BWV 582); the Berceuse
Berceuse (Chopin)
Frédéric Chopin's Berceuse Op. 57 is a lullaby to be played on piano. It consists of variations in D-flat major. At first the composer titled the work Variations, but the title was altered for publication to the current Berceuse....
, op. 57 of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
; and the fourth movement of the Konzert, op. 38, of Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
.
Renaissance and early baroque
Historians refer to the transitional period between the Middle Ages and early modern world as the RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. The term "Renaissance", which entered the English language before the second half of the 19th century, is taken directly from the French word meaning "rebirth", since, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, these two centuries represented "the great revival of art and letters, under the influence of classical models, which began in Italy in the fourteenth century and continued during the fifteenth and sixteenth." In this light, the Renaissance as a whole was a period in which historicism was the dominant mode of artistic creativity.
Some forms of historicist practice met with little immediate success. Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino
Nicola Vicentino was an Italian music theorist and composer of the Renaissance. He was one of the most visionary musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyboard, and devising a practical system of chromatic writing two hundred years before the rise of equal...
, author of L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica (Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice, 1555), set about to revive the lost chromatic and enharmonic genera of Greek music theory
Music of Ancient Greece
The music of ancient Greece was almost universally present in society, from marriages and funerals to religious ceremonies, theatre, folk music and the ballad-like reciting of epic poetry. It thus played an integral role in the lives of ancient Greeks...
through the invention of the arcicembalo and the arciorgano—keyboards furnished with six manuals whose octaves were subdivided into thirty-one keys, thus allowing for the performance of music composed in half-steps and microtones. (Microtonal composition, however, has been revived by numerous twentieth- and 21st-century composers, including Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
, Alois Hába
Alois Hába
Alois Hába was a Czech composer, musical theorist and teacher. He is primarily known for his microtonal compositions, especially using the quarter tone scale, though he used others such as sixth-tones and twelfth-tones....
, Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
, and Krzystof Penderecki.)
Renaissance historicism was a primary catalyst for the revolutionary stylistic changes that led, among other things, to the creation of opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
. In their attempts to emulate the mythical powers of ancient music, Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera...
and his 16th-century contemporaries, with little more to stimulate their imaginations than extant literary works and treatises, pictorial representations, and other indirect evidence, sought to imitate through appropriate musical means the ideas and emotions suggested by newly composed dramatic poetry based on Classical models. Peri's now fragmentary Dafne
Dafne
Dafne is the earliest known work that, by modern standards, could be considered an opera. It was composed by Jacopo Peri in 1597, with a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini.-History:...
is widely regarded as the first true opera.
Considerable controversy had arisen about the best way to realize Classical musical ideals. Girolamo Mei
Girolamo Mei
Girolamo Mei was an Italian historian and humanist, famous in music history for providing the intellectual impetus to the Florentine Camerata, which attempted to revive ancient Greek music drama. He was born Florence, and died in Rome.Mei was the first European after Boethius to do a detailed...
and Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and of the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei...
, antiquarian theorists affiliated, like Peri, with the Florentine Camerata
Florentine Camerata
The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama...
, contended that the ancient Greeks obtained their marvelous musical effects through melody alone, and were prepared to abandon polyphony entirely in the belief that its "diverse and contrary parts" would obscure the meaning and efficacy of the texts chosen to be set. Although he never took such a radical course in his own music, Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, on the authority of Plato's Republic, still believed that words should be "the mistress of the harmony and not the servant." Like his earlier and later contemporaries, the subject matter of his three surviving operatic masterpieces — L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
, and L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is 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...
— is drawn from Classical mythology
Classical mythology
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is the cultural reception of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture.Classical mythology has provided...
and history.
The literary Italian madrigal
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
of the 14th century freely served as a model for Renaissance authors, whose creative efforts, in turn, would inspire their composer contemporaries, including Jacob Arcadelt, Philippe Verdelot
Philippe Verdelot
Philippe Verdelot was a French composer of the Renaissance, who spent most of his life in Italy. He is commonly considered to be the father of the Italian madrigal, and certainly was one of its earliest and most prolific composers; in addition he was prominent in the musical life of Florence...
, and Adrian Willaert
Adrian Willaert
Adrian Willaert was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance and founder of the Venetian School. He was one of the most representative members of the generation of northern composers who moved to Italy and transplanted the polyphonic Franco-Flemish style there....
. The 16th-century revival of the madrigal, first in Italy and later in England, owed little or nothing to Trecento
Trecento
The Trecento refers to the 14th century in Italian cultural history.Commonly the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history...
musical styles. Frequently provided with an amatory text and written in five or six imitative voice parts, by the early 17th century the madrigal had developed into an extremely sophisticated type, particularly in the hands of Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
, Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, William Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
and Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley
Thomas Morley was an English composer, theorist, editor and organist of the Renaissance, and the foremost member of the English Madrigal School. He was the most famous composer of secular music in Elizabethan England and an organist at St Paul's Cathedral...
. Monteverdi's late madrigals increasingly take on the character of monody
Monody
In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death....
, a style resulting from deliberate attempts by the Florentine Camerata
Florentine Camerata
The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de' Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama...
to rediscover the music of the ancient Greeks. Although the madrigal subsequently fell out of fashion, it was revived by Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
, Edward German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...
, and, in a modern orchestral context, by Bernard Rands
Bernard Rands
Bernard Rands is a composer of contemporary classical music.Rands studied music and English literature at the University of Wales, Bangor, and composition with Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna in Darmstadt, Germany, and with Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio in Milan, Italy.He held residencies...
.
At the beginning of the 17th century composers were still using traditional bass and harmonic patterns and dance types originating as early as the late 15th century as the basis of new music. The romanesca
Romanesca
Romanesca was a song form popular in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It was most popular with Italian composers of the early Baroque period...
, which inspired numerous dance variations and vocal improvisations, attracted composers as late as Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
, and Salomone Rossi. The harmonic pattern of the folia
Folia
La Folia is one of the oldest remembered European musical themes, or primary material, generally melodic, of a composition, on record. The theme exists in two versions, referred to as early and late folias, the earlier being faster.-History:The epithet 'Folia' has several meanings in music...
, a dance probably of 15th-century Portuguese origin, continued to hold the interest of composers not only in the 17th and 18th centuries, among them Marin Marais
Marin Marais
Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for 6 months. He was hired as a musician in 1676 to the royal court of Versailles...
, Archangelo Corelli, and Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, but in the nineteenth, twentieth, and early 21st centuries as well, including Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
, and David Solomons
David Solomons
David Solomons presented the Crossing Cultures segment on BBC World's Fast Track programme.- External links :*...
. Other renaissance variation and dance types that continued to be used by post-renaissance composers include the canzona
Canzona
In the 16th century an instrumental chanson; later, a piece for ensemble in several sections or tempos...
and canzonet (e.g., those in the Années de pèlerinage
Années de Pèlerinage
Années de pèlerinage is a set of three suites by Franz Liszt for solo piano. Liszt's complete musical style is evident in this masterwork, which ranges from virtuosic fireworks to sincerely moving emotional statements. His musical maturity can be seen evolving through his experience and travel...
of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
); chaconne
Chaconne
A chaconne ; is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and...
or passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
(e.g., the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony and act 4, scene 5 of the opera Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
by Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
); pavane
Pavane
The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century .A pavane is a slow piece of music which is danced to in pairs....
(Pavane pour une infante défunte
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Pavane pour une infante défunte is a well-known piece written for solo piano by the French composer Maurice Ravel in 1899 when he was studying composition at the Conservatoire de Paris under Gabriel Fauré. Ravel also published an orchestrated version of the Pavane in 1910...
by Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
); and moresca
Moresca
Moresca or Mauresque is a 15th/16th century pantomime dance in which the executants wore Moorish costumes. One such is the concluding music of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo...
or Morris dance
Morris dance
Morris dance is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers. Implements such as sticks, swords, handkerchiefs and bells may also be wielded by the dancers...
.
An important 16th-century ancestor (along with the canzona
Canzona
In the 16th century an instrumental chanson; later, a piece for ensemble in several sections or tempos...
) of the fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
, the ricercare occupied an important place in the keyboard works of Girolamo Cavazzoni
Girolamo Cavazzoni
Girolamo Cavazzoni was an Italian organist and composer, son of Marco Antonio Cavazzoni. Little is known about his life except that he worked at Venice and Mantua, and published two collections of organ music...
, Claudio Merulo
Claudio Merulo
Claudio Merulo was an Italian composer, publisher and organist of the late Renaissance period, most famous for his innovative keyboard music and his ensemble music composed in the Venetian polychoral style. He was born in Correggio and died in Parma...
, and Antonio Frescobaldi. It would reach its zenith in J. S. Bach's Musikalisches Opfer (1747), and would be revived in the 20th century by Bohuslav Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...
, Antonio Casella, and Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
(Cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
, 1951–52, based on a medieval text).
The intimate relationship between music and dance that existed in Greek drama was remembered and renewed during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
and early Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
with the development of the ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
. Although little had survived of the music of Classical drama, courtly festivities featuring music, dance, costume, and stagecraft grew increasingly elaborate in the 15th and 16th centuries, and by the 17th century the French court, under the patronage of the "Sun King" Louis XIV, ushered in the first great age of ballet (see also Ballet Comique de la Reine
Ballet Comique de la Reine
The Ballet Comique de la Reine was a court entertainment, now considered to be the first ballet de cour. It was staged in Paris, France, in 1581 for the court of Catherine de' Medici. It was produced and choreographed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx and danced by Queen Louise and the women of the court...
, ballet de cour, balletto a cavallo, boutade, carrousel
Carrousel
Carrousel is a booklet published in 1987 containing three short texts written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1923 for "Karussel", a Russian cabaret.-Content:The three texts are:...
, danse equestre, intermezzo
Intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...
, mascarade, trionfo
Trionfo
Trionfo is an Italian word meaning "triumph", also "triumphal procession", and a car or float in such a procession. It may derive from a call of triumph during antique triumphal processions: "Io triumpe"...
). Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
created music for a variety of new courtly dance types that would become highly stylized and find their way into the suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
, sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
, and symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
of later centuries (e.g., the minuet
Minuet
A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
). Lully also introduced the ballet into French opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, in which subject matter drawn from ancient myth, legend, and history was predominant (see also opéra ballet). In England, the masque
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...
fulfilled a similar courtly function. Composers such as Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
(Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell to 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...
), Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
(Orphée et Eurydice), and Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
(The Creatures of Prometheus
The Creatures of Prometheus (Beethoven)
The Creatures of Prometheus is a ballet composed in 1801 by Ludwig van Beethoven following the libretto of Salvatore Viganò. The overture to the ballet is part of the concert repertoire...
) variously sustained this classically inspired tradition, which has endured into modern times in such works as Job: A Masque for Dancing by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, Bacchus et Ariane by Albert Roussel
Albert Roussel
Albert Charles Paul Marie Roussel was a French composer. He spent seven years as a midshipman, turned to music as an adult, and became one of the most prominent French composers of the interwar period...
, Apollon musagète by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, and Harmonie der Welt by Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
. (Many modern ballets have also been based on preexisting scores inspired by Classical themes, e.g., the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , commonly known by its English title Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, is a symphonic poem for orchestra by Claude Debussy, approximately 10 minutes in duration...
of Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
was transformed into a one-act ballet by Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Diaghilev
Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev , usually referred to outside of Russia as Serge, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.-Early life and career:...
.)
In the field of sacred music, the Mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
continued to provide a variety of opportunities for composers to create new works while respecting ties to centuries-old musical traditions. The items of the Gregorian plainsong mass could be set polyphonically and performed in accordance with established liturgical cycles. All the movements of a cantus firmus mass could be based on a single Gregorian melody (or even a preexisting secular tune), which was usually heard in the tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
. In some masses, the borrowed melody was distributed among the various voice parts, freely varied, or paraphrased with great imaginative skill, as in the Missa Pange lingua
Missa Pange lingua
The Missa Pange lingua is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez, probably dating from around 1515, near the end of his life...
(c. 1520) of Josquin des Prez
Josquin Des Prez
Josquin des Prez [Josquin Lebloitte dit Desprez] , often referred to simply as Josquin, was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance...
, based on a 13th-century hymn attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
. Tenor melodies could also be "carved out" of the vowels of a name or short text using the solmization
Solmization
Solmization is a system of attributing a distinct syllable to each note in a musical scale. Various forms of solmization are in use and have been used throughout the world.In Europe and North America, solfège is the convention used most often...
syllables derived from the 11th century Guidonian hexachord
Hexachord
In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...
, or the hexachord itself might serve in the same capacity, as in the Missa Ut re mi fa sol la of Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
. Relatively few masses used a newly invented cantus firmus
Cantus firmus
In music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition.The plural of this Latin term is , though the corrupt form canti firmi is also attested...
, whereas one of the most frequent types, the parody mass
Parody mass
A parody mass is a musical setting of the mass, typically from the 16th century, that uses multiple voices of another pre-existing piece of music, such as a fragment of a motet or a secular chanson, as part of its melodic material. It is distinguished from the two other most prominent types of...
, was composed of various parts and sections from preexisting polyphonic works.
Eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries
In subsequent centuries, the historicist practice of borrowing clearly identifiable preexisting musical materials retained its importance. Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and his contemporaries incorporated traditional chorale
Chorale
A chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
melodies into numerous of their major works in such genres as the cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
, chorale prelude
Chorale prelude
In music, a chorale prelude is a short liturgical composition for organ using a chorale tune as its basis. It was a predominant style of the German Baroque era and reached its culmination in the works of J.S. Bach, who wrote 46 examples of the form in his Orgelbüchlein.-Function:The liturgical...
, chorale fantasia
Chorale fantasia
Chorale fantasia is a type of large organ composition based on a chorale melody. The term also applies to large-scale vocal Chorale settings in such works as the St Matthew Passion and Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23 of Johann Sebastian Bach.-History:Chorale fantasias first appeared in...
, chorale fugue, chorale motet
Chorale motet
The chorale motet was a type of musical composition in mostly Protestant parts of Europe, principally Germany, and mainly during the 16th century. It involved setting a chorale melody and text as a motet....
, chorale variations, oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
, and Passion
Passion music
In church music, Passion is a term for sung musical settings, normally at least partly choral, of the Gospel texts covering the Passion of Jesus, the events leading up to the Crucifixion of Jesus, and emphasising his suffering...
. Like composers before them, Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
and Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
composed variations
Variation (music)
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.-Variation form:...
on themes taken from earlier composers (e.g., Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel
The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, is a work for solo piano written by Johannes Brahms in 1861. It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No...
, op. 24, and Variations on a Theme by Haydn, op. 56a; and Reger's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, op. 81, and Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart
The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 132, is a set of variations for orchestra composed in 1914 by Max Reger; the composer conducted the premiere in Berlin on February 5, 1915.-Description:...
, op. 132). Stravinsky derived much of the musical material for his Pulcinella
Pulcinella (ballet)
Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play — Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography,...
from the work of various eighteenth composers.
Creating new music that closely follows the style of an earlier composer or period has provided a creative outlet for both major and minor masters. Mozart, whose music was richly informed by his contact with the antiquarian music circle of Baron Gottfried van Swieten
Gottfried van Swieten
Gottfried, Freiherr van Swieten was a diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Austrian Empire during the 18th century...
, exhibited a particular gift for the baroque style in such works as his Suite in C Major (sometimes subtitled "in the style of Handel"), KV 399 (385i), which includes an ouverture, allemande, and courante. (A fragmentary sarabande and Eine kleine Gigue, K. 574 also document his skill as an historicist composer.) In a letter to his father of 7 February 1778, he proudly states, "As you know, I can more or less adopt or imitate any kind and any style of composition" (Solomon 1995, 119).
A more eclectic approach to historicism in which multiple historical style influences are evident was adopted by Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Born Ludewig Spohr, he is usually known by the French form of his name. Described by Dorothy Mayer as "The Forgotten Master", Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven. As a violinist, his virtuoso playing was admired by Queen Victoria...
in his Symphony No. 6 in G Major, op. 116 ("Historical") "in the Style and Taste of Four Different Periods": 1. Bach-Handel'sche Periode, 1720, Largo - Grave; 2. Haydn-Mozart'sche Periode, 1780, Larghetto; 3. Beethoven'sche Periode, 1810, Scherzo; and 4. Allerneueste Periode ["very latest Period"], 1840, Allegro vivace. Though not characteristic of his later style, Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
paid tribute not only to the "classicism" of Haydn but also to the baroque gavotte in his Symphony No. 1 in D Major, op. 25 ("Classical").
The fusion of historical and emergent styles, forms, techniques, and content in a given work is encountered with great frequency in the music of most periods. The fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
, for example, whose origins can be traced to the imitative counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
of the late Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and which reached full maturity in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, figures prominently in the musical styles of a number of important composers in the 19th century and beyond, including Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
(whose early works were modelled on symphonies of C. P. E. Bach), Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
(whose works for solo cello, viola or violin closely imitate Bachian forms), Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
, and Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
.
A closely related instrumental genre that first appeared in the late Renaissance, the toccata
Toccata
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...
achieved particular prominence in the keyboard works of Buxtehude
Dieterich Buxtehude
Dieterich Buxtehude was a German-Danish organist and composer of the Baroque period. His organ works represent a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and in church services...
and J.S. Bach and has since been revived by such distinguished composers as Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
, and Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
.
Other romantic and early 20th century composers among the many who demonstrated either explicit or implicit historicist affinities are Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...
, Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, Marius Casadesus
Marius Casadesus
Marius Casadesus was a French violinist and composer. He was the brother of Henri Casadesus, uncle of the famed pianist Robert Casadesus, and grand-uncle to Jean Casadesus....
, Chávez
Carlos Chávez
Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...
, Ferdinand David
Ferdinand David (musician)
Ferdinand David was a German virtuoso violinist and composer.Born in the same house in Hamburg where Felix Mendelssohn had been born the previous year, David was raised Jewish but later converted to Christianity...
, Fauré
Gabriel Fauré
Gabriel Urbain Fauré was a French composer, organist, pianist and teacher. He was one of the foremost French composers of his generation, and his musical style influenced many 20th century composers...
, François-Joseph Fétis
François-Joseph Fétis
François-Joseph Fétis was a Belgian musicologist, composer, critic and teacher. He was one of the most influential music critics of the 19th century, and his enormous compilation of biographical data in the Biographie universelle des musiciens remains an important source of information today...
, Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
, d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
, Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
, Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
, Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski GBE was a Polish pianist, composer, diplomat, politician, and the second Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland.-Biography:...
, Pfitzner
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...
, Manuel Ponce, Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, Respighi
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...
, Satie
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
, Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
, Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
, and Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
.
In the 20th century Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
attempted a revival of ancient Greek practices of musical theater (he also regularly contributed his own texts in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
to his own musical works).
Historicism in contemporary music
Paralleling the work of contemporary architects, designers, authors, and other artists who have openly revisited the past, a growing number of late-twentieth and 21st-century composers have adopted the historicist approach to composition, employing to a greater or lesser extent materials, structures, styles, techniques, media, and conceptual content associated with previous eras. In contemporary art music, the entire gamut of historical style periods has served as a creative resource.Given that tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
itself is deeply rooted in pre-modernist historical traditions, tonal types of minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
, post-minimalism, and contemporary world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
may all be subsumed in varying degrees under the rubric of historicism.
Interest in musical historicism has been spurred by the emergence of such international organizations as the Delian Society
Delian Society
The Delian Society, conceived by American composer Joseph Dillon Ford, was founded on 23 January 2004 as an international community of composers, performers, scholars, recording engineers, music publishers, and amateurs dedicated to the revitalization of the great tonal traditions in art music...
, dedicated to the revitalization of tonal art music, and Vox Saeculorum
Vox Saeculorum
Vox Sæculorum is an international society of contemporary composers writing in the Baroque style established in 2006. Vox Sæculorum was the primary focus of a feature length article on period baroque composition written by Grant Colburn and published in the Summer issue of Early Music America...
, whose composer members have a specialized interest in baroque idioms (Colburn 2007).
Some contemporary historicist composers, similar to the 18th-century literary figures Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry. He died of arsenic poisoning, either from a suicide attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.-Childhood:...
, James MacPherson
James Macpherson
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...
(the Ossian
Ossian
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...
poems), and Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto), have written under a pseudepigraphic ascription, attributing their work to other composers, either real or imaginary. These include Winfried Michel
Winfried Michel
Winfried Michel is a German recorder player, composer, and editor of music.Michel studied with Ingetraud Drescher, Nikolaus Delius, and Frans Brüggen. He is lecturer for the recorder at the Staatliche Hochschule Münster and at the Musikakademie Kassel...
, author of the impressive "Haydn Forgeries" (Beckerman 1994; Lindskoog 1996) and Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk
Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is an American painter and lutenist-composer born in Ukraine.-Biography:Turovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1961, when it was part of the Soviet Union. He studied art from an early age under his father, the painter Mikhail Turovsky and at the Shevchenko State Art School...
, whose original lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
and viola da gamba compositions in the baroque style were sufficiently convincing to be mistaken for works by masters of the composer's own mythopoeic invention (Colburn 2007), and led to accusations of "trivializing musicology" (Smith 2002).
Further reading
- Applegate, Celia. 2005. Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn's Revival of the St. Matthew Passion. Cornell University Press.
- Burkholder, J. Peter, Andreas Giger, and David C. Birchler (eds.). 1994–2007. Musical Borrowing: An Annotated Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana School of Music.
- Carl, Robert. 2001. "Introduction: Historicism in American Music since 1980." Contemporary Music Review 20, no. 4:1-7.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1965. "Quotation and Originality." The Portable Emerson, ed. and with an introduction by Mark Van Doren. New York: The Viking Press.
- Ford, Joseph Dillon. 2003. Orpheus in the Twenty-first Century: Historicism and the Art Music Renascence. Gainesville, Florida: New Music Classics [online publisher].
- Frisch, Walter. 2004. "Reger's Historicist Modernism." The Musical Quarterly 87(4): 732-48.
- Gardiner, Patrick L. 1995. "Historicism." The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Garratt, James. 2002. Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ———. 2004. "Mendelssohn and the Rise of Musical Historicism." The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, ed. Peter Mercer-Taylor, 55–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Grout, Donald J. and Claude V. Palisca. 1996. A History of Western Music, 5th ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
- "Historicism." 2003. Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th ed.
- "Lament." 1975. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2d ed., rev. and enlarged.
- Lenz, Eric David. 2002. "Neoclassicism in Claude Debussy's Sonate pour violoncelle et piano." DMA diss., University of Alabama.
- Lippman, Edward. 1994. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
- MacKenzie, James C. 1995. The Text of Time: Musical Quotation and Historicism in Berio's Sinfonia. Ottawa: National Library of Canada (Bibliothèque nationale du Canada).
- Mahnkopf, Claus-Steffen. 2004. The Foundations of Contemporary Composition. Hofheim: Wolke.
- "Massachusetts" Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2d ed., rev. and enlarged, 1975.
- Mercer-Taylor, Peter. 2004. The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Mihailovic, Alexander. 1999. Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries : A Centennial Symposium. Westport, Connectivut: Greenwood Press.
- Reese, Gustave. 1968. Music in the Middle Ages. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
- ———. 1959. Music in the Renaissance. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
- Roth, Michael S. 1994. Rediscovering History : Culture, Politics, and the Psyche. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
- Saffle, Michael and Rossana Dalmonte. 2003. Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe: Music as a Mirror of Religious, Political, Cultural, and Aesthetic Transformations. Proceedings of the International Conference held at the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (Como), 14–18 December 1998. Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press.
- Toews, John Edward. 2004. Becoming Historical : Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-century Berlin. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Trachtenberg, Marvin, and Isabelle Hyman. 1986. Architecture from Prehistory to Post-Modernism: The Western Tradition. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
- Watkins, Glenn. 1994. Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
- Weaver, Robert Lamar; Norma Wright Weaver; Susan Helen Parisi; Ernest Charles Harriss; and Calvin M Bower. 2000. Music in the Theater, Church, and Villa : Essays in Honor of Robert Lamar Weaver and Norma Wright Weaver. Warren, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press.
- Wolff, Christoph. 2004. "A Bach Cult in Late-Eighteenth-Century Berlin: Sara Levy's Musical Salon." 1886th Stated Meeting. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. House of the Academy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 15 December.
- Zon, Bennett. 1999. Nineteenth-century British Music Studies. Aldershot [Hampshire]; Brookfield [Vermont]: Ashgate.