Music Topics
HUMANITIES 1
INTRODUCTION:
A multi-media introduction to the eras of art in Western Culture. This is a slide presentation of art images of women from Greek times to the 20th Century. Each slide is presented accompanied by music from the appropriate age. It is meant to introduce the students to how each age looks at the same ideas or topics in different ways.
GREEKS (500 B.C.E. – 400 C.E.)
- Values: form, balance, arete
- No music to present – we don’t know what it sounded like.
- Lecture on how music represents balance to the Greeks, as it is perceived both as a science (Pythacrius developed music ratios) and an emotional outlet (different types of music were thought to influence the emotions temperament).
- Lecture on music’s “magic might” as illustrated by the story of Orpheus
- Slides of Pan (the Greek god of music) and Greek musical instruments to show that music was an important part of Greek life and culture.
AGE OF FAITH (MEDEIVAL ERA) (400 - 1400 C.E..)
- Values: Christian faith
- Monophonic music (chant) – first music that is notated so that we are reasonably sure of how it sounded.
- Secular music of the jongleurs, troubadours, trouveres and minnesingers
RENAISSANCE (1400 – 1600 C.E.)
- Values: Humanism, renewed interest in Greco-Roman culture
- Polyphonic music is introduced (compare to depth perception in painting)
- Motets – sacred music
- Madrigals – secular music
- Reformation and Counter Reformation are important historical events in the development of sacred music in the eras to follow.
BAROQUE (1600 - 1750 C.E.)
- Values: a part of the Age of Reason in which humans used their intellect to manipulate the world around them; as an art form music is ornate, dramatic virtuosic and emotional (opera develops during this time).
- Music – Instrumental and Vocal music are equal in importance (prior to this time music was vocally oriented).
- Examples:
- Recording of a portion of one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos demonstrates the importance of instrumental music and the value of the virtuoso.
- Video of excerpts from Handel’s Messiah illustrate the form and structure that represents the Age of Reason and also the emotion of opera (Messiah is an oratorio which is opera without the dramatic stage trappings of scenery and costumes.)
CLASSIC (1750 – 1820 C.E.)
- Values: a continuation of the Age of Reason in which form and structure and objectivity take high priority over dramatic emotions.
- Music – Instrumental music becomes more important than vocal music except in the church
- Examples:
- Video of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 shows the complex formal structure and hints at the emotional drama that will follow in the Romantic era.
ROMANTIC (1800 – 1900 C.E.)
- Values: emotion; subjective; interest in nature (benevolent and malevolent), the exotic, nationalism, revolution.
- Music – musical forms explore the extremes and become either very short and intimate (art songs by Schubert and the piano music of Chopin) or very large scale (the orchestral works of Berlioz for example)
- Examples:
- Recordings of “The Erlking” and “The Trout” by Schubert
- Video of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique or a recording of Smetana’s The Moldau.
IMPRESSIONISM
- Values: transition between the Romantic era and the 20th Century. Interest in nature suggests the Romantic while at the same time use of new techniques suggests the coming 20th Century. This can be directly related to the art of Monet.
- Example: Recording of Debussy’s Prelude to the “Afternoon of a Faun”
20th CENTURY
- Values: Alienation, Recontextualization, Use of technique for techniques sake; exploration of new techniques, new nationalism (based on authentic folk forms), incorporation of non-Western ideas and techniques.
- Examples:
- Rite of Spring by Stravinsky illustrates new techniques
- A Survivor from Warsaw by Schoenberg illustrates 12-tone technique and has a strong tie into the Holocaust. His Five Pieces for Orchestra or Pierrot Lunaire illustrate radically new techniques.
- Rodeo or Billy the Kid by Copland or Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin illustrate the use of nationalism and the developing importance of American music especially with the incorporation of jazz.
- Concerto Grosso 1985 by Ellen Zwillich is an example of recontexualization by using a fragment from a Concerto Grosso by Handel in a very contemporary sounding work.
- The McDonald’s commercial “Mac Tonight” taken from Weill’s “Mack the Knife” is another example of recontexualization.
Last Updated: 10/19/22 |