Music 241: Music History I From the Middle Ages to the Early Baroque

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1 Music 241: Music History I From the Middle Ages to the Early Baroque Fall 2018: M-W (2:30-3:45) Steve Saunders Office: 235 Bixler Phone: x5677; sesaunde Office Hours: M and W 10:00-11:00 (but drop in any time!) Overview Music 241 concentrates on what is sometimes called early music, music in the Western tradition from the Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque periods (to ca. 1700). The course deals with composers, their works, and the cultures in which the musical compositions arose, treating its subjects from several viewpoints: historical, cultural, and analytical. Music 241 will introduce you to: 1) a variety of musical compositions, representing the range of styles and genres cultivated in the Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque; 2) the historical and analytical questions posed by those works, and most fundamentally; 3) questions about the nature of historical understanding--the ways in which historians think about and study such music. Textbook Purchases Richard Taruskin and Christopher H. Gibbs. The Oxford History of Western Music: College Edition. First Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, (OHWM) [Required] Robert Holzer and David Rothenberg, eds., The Oxford Anthology of Western Music [Required] Oxford Recorded Anthology of Western Music, vol. 1 [Optional] The recordings that accompany our anthology are not required. You will find recordings of most of the works on the web and on our class web page. The recordings may make studying somewhat more convenient. Class Web Pages The class web pages contain assignments, public domain scores, streaming audio files, resources, and supplementary links. The Moodle page has pdf files of all reserve readings. There is a link to this page from the class web page, above.

2 Requirements and Evaluation Grading Your grade in Music 241 will be based on: 1. The score on a midterm exam (25%), and final exam (25%). Both the midterm and final will have two sections: a listening/score study portion, and a written portion. The midterm covers first portion of the course; the final covers the second half of the semester and is not cumulative. 2. Grade on quizzes (10%). There will be 7-8 short quizzes. You may drop your two lowest quiz grades. Some will be announced quizzes others will be short, take-home projects. There are no make-ups of quizzes; a missed quiz counts as one of the dropped grades. 3. Class Participation (5%) 4. Grade on an oral presentation on a scholarly article (10%) 5. Grade on a longer research paper (25%) This semester each student will write a research paper consisting of a chapter in a monograph on a chant manuscript that was recently acquired by the Colby College Library. Our book will be printed and bound and placed in Colby s Special Collections for use by future users of the manuscript. More details TBA. Attendance Policy Success in MU 241 requires attending classes, keeping up with reading and listening assignments, and completing projects as required. You may miss two class meetings for illness, emergencies, athletic conflicts, etc. without penalty provided that you notify me before class of your absence. Each unexcused absence beyond two lowers the semester grade by 3 percentage points. Academic Integrity Honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility are cornerstones of a Colby education and provide the foundation for scholarly inquiry, intellectual discourse, and an open and welcoming campus community. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to: violating clearly stated rules for taking an exam or completing homework; plagiarism 2

3 (including material from sources without a citation and quotation marks around any borrowed words); claiming another s work or a modification of another s work as one s own; buying or attempting to buy papers or projects for a course; fabricating information or citations; misrepresentations to faculty within the context of a course; and submitting the same work, including an essay that you wrote, in more than one course without the permission of the instructors. For more on recognizing and avoiding plagiarism, see: libguides.colby.edu/avoidingplagiarism 3

4 Music 241: Tentative Course Schedule DATE TOPICS ASSIGNMENT (To be completed before each class) W Sept. 5 Music and History (Meet in Miller Library Special Collections) M Sept. 10 Chant I: Music/Text/Performance Read Syllabus Explore Class Web Page and Moodle Page Read: OHWM, 1; 4-10; Listen: 1-2: Justus ut palma (Antiphon and Psalm) 1-3: Justus ut palma (Introit) W Sept. 12 M Sept. 17 W Sept. 19 M Sept. 24 Chant II: Catholic Liturgy in the Medieval Era Chant III: Liturgical Books and an Introduction to Mode Chant IV: Notation, Transmission, and Orality Working Session with Chant Manuscripts (Meet in Miller Library Special Collections) 1-4: Jusus ut palma (Alleluia) Read: OHWM, 10-12; Fassler, Neumes and Square Notation Listen: 1-8: Kyrie IV 1-9: Cunctipotens genitor Read: OHWM, Listening: 1-13: Agnus Dei II Read: OHWM, 12-19; Fassler, Neumes and Square Notation Treitler, Homer and Gregory Listen: I-6: Justus ut palma (Gradual) Assignment TBA W Sept. 26 Elaborating the Liturgy Read: OHWM, Listen: 1-14 Victimae paschali laudes (Sequence) 1-15: Dies Irae (Sequence) 1-17: Ave maris stella (Hymn) 1-21: Quem quaertis (Trope) M Oct. 1 Early Polyphony Read: OHWM, 36-41; Listen: 1-28: Anon., Jubilemus exultemus 1-29, Anon., Ad superni regis 1-30: Leonin, Viderunt omnes W Oct. 3 M Oct. 8 Fauvel, Vitry, Machaut and Music of the Ars nova Politics and the Motet: Dufay s Nuper rosarum flores 1-31: Perotin, Viderunt omnes Read: OHWM, 85-88; 91-92; Listen: 1-38: Anon., L autre jour 1-40: Vitry, Tribum/Quoniam/Merito 1-41: Machaut, Felix virgo/inviolata 1-43: Machaut, En mon cuer 1-45: Machaut, Rose, liz Read: OHWM, Wright, Nuper Rosarum Listen: 1-51, Ciconia, Doctorum principem 1-52, Dufay, Nuper rosarum flores 4

5 W Oct. 10 Island and Mainland: Music in the Early 15 th Century Read: OHWM, Goodstein, Putting the Sensuality Back Listen: 35, Anon., Sumer is icumen in 37 Dunstable, Quam pulchra es 38 Du Fay, Ave maris stella 39, Binchois, Anguished grief M Oct. 15 Fall Break: No Classes W Oct. 17 Emulation and Imitation: Sacred Music in the 15 th and Early 16 th Centuries M Oct. 22 W Oct. 24 Read: OHWM: ; Atlas, A Fictive Composition Manual Eisenberg, Arms and the Mass Listen: 40, Anon, Caput Mass, Kyrie 41, Ockeghem, Caput Mass, Kyrie 42, L home armé tune 42, Busnoys, L homme armé, Agnus Dei Musica ficta and Editions of Early Music Read: Atlas, Musica ficta Wegman, Musica ficta Listen: TBA Art Perfected: From Josquin to Palestrina Read: OHWM, ; Listen: 47, Josquin, Ave Maria 49, Josquin, Benedicta es 51, Palestrina, Missae PM, Kyrie, Gloria 53, Byrd, Two Settings of Agnus Dei M Oct. 29 Mid-Term Exam W Oct. 31 No Class M Nov. 5 W Nov. 7 Vernacular Song in the 16 th Century: Frottola, Villanella, and Chanson The Late Italian Madrigal and the Madrigal Beyond the Alps Read: OHWM, Listen: 56 Cara, Mal un muta per effecto 57 Sermisy, Tant que vivray --, Janequin, La guerre 58b, Lasso, Matona mia cara 60, Rore, De le belle contrade d oriente Read: OHWM, ; McClary, Modal Subjectivities, Chapter 3 Listen: 59, Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno 61, Marenzio, Solo e pensoso 62 Monteverdi, Cruda Amarilli Monteverdi, Lament of the Nymph 64 Weelkes, As Vesta was from Latmos M Nov. 12 The Monodic Revolution Read: OHWM, Sanford, National Singing Styles Caccini, Le nuove musiche (excerpt) Listen: 65 Caccini, Amarilli, mia bella1 st Caccini, Udite, udite amanti Grandi, O quam tu pulchra es Chapter Drafts Due 5

6 W Nov. 14 Monteverdi and the Birth of Opera Read: OHWM, Listen:, Monteverdi, Lament of the Nymph 67, Monteverdi, Orfeo, Act II M Nov. 19 Approaches to the Analysis of Early 17 th -Century Music: Cantus, Hexachord, and Mode 68, Monteverdi, Pur ti miro Read: Chafe. Monteverdi s Tonal Language Listen: Monteverdi, Zefiro torna Monteverdi, Cruda Amarilli W Nov. 21 Thanksgiving Break: No Class M Nov. 26 Seventeenth-Century Instrumental Music Read: OHWM, ; Listen: Frescobaldi, Cento partite Corelli, Trio Sonata in g minor, Op. 3, #11 Vivaldi, Spring Concerto W Nov. 28 How to be HIP: The Historically Informed Performance Movement Read: Hoyt and Gallant, Online Articles Taruskin, Letting the Music Speak Kelly, Early Music: A Very Short Intro Listen: Bach, Mass in b minor Bach, Brandenburg Cto. 5 (excerpts) M Dec. 3 Opera After Monteverdi Read: OHWM, McClary Gender Ambiguity/Erotic Excess Inglis-Arkell, What Did it Mean to be a Castrato W Dec. 5 Presentation of Research Chapters 6

7 Scholarly Articles/Chapters for Oral Reports 1. Leo Treitler, Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 3 (July 1974), [Sept. 19 Asks a question that seems unanswerable: how was Gregorian Chant composed and how can we know what the music was like when it arose before it could be recorded with music notation? 2. Craig Wright, Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores. King Solomon's Temple, and the Veneration of the Virgin, Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 47, No. 3 (1994), [Oct. 8 A historical tour de force. Wright reveals layers of meaning in one of the most famous works of the Renaissance, using every sort of evidence imaginable musical analysis, biblical exegesis, iconography, archival work, the study of architecture... and more 3. Alan Atlas, Editing a Chanson: Musica ficta, in Renaissance Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), ; Rob C. Wegman, Musica ficta, in Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1992), [Oct. 22 Medieval and Renaissance music uses very few sharps or flats. But that doesn t mean that they weren t used; singers were expected to add them on the fly during performance. How do you know when to sing false (ficta) notes? You ll never look at an edition of early music in the same way again after reading these. 4. Susan McClary, Modal Subjectivities: Self-Fashioning in the Italian Madrigal (University of California Press, 2004), Chapters 1 and 3. [Nov. 7 McClary has some novel ideas about how musical compositions carry messages that can be understood by those who are part of the music culture in which the works were created and performed. And she thinks that those meanings are often about sex. 5. Eric Chafe, Monteverdi s Tonal Language (New York: Shirmer, 1992), 21-37; [Nov. 19 Traditional tonal theory doesn t do well at explaining early Baroque music. Chafe tries to create a music theory to explain the sometimes weird harmonies of the early Baroque period. For music theory fans! 6. Richard Taruskin, On Letting the Music Speak for Itself, in Text & Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), [Nov. 28 Historically informed performance is the movement that tries to recreate the sounds of the past, by, for example, using early instruments, reading early treatises to figure out how the music was performed, etc. Seems like a good idea, right? Not so fast, says Taruskin. 7

8 7. Susan McClary, Gender Ambiguities and Erotic Excess in the Operas of Cavalli. Chapter 4 of Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Centuy Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). [Dec. 3 What s the deal with women disguised as men in Baroque operas? Men cross dressing? Castrated male singers? And why don t bass singers get to be lovers? McClary explores some fascinating questions around eroticism and gender in mid-seventeenth century opera. mid-seventeenth century opera. 8

MUS 131A Spring 2018 History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque

MUS 131A Spring 2018 History of Music I: Ancient through Early Baroque Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:00-12:20 PM, Slosberg Music 215 Professor Karen Desmond (kdesmond@brandeis.edu). My office hours are Tuesdays