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Join The Student Room TodayBe part of the UK's largest and fastest growing student community. It's free to join and a lot of fun - Get inspired, express your ideas, interact and share Revision:Secular vocal music A2 special focus works 2009From The Student RoomTSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Music > Secular Vocal Music Focus Works
Weelkes, Sing We At PleasureBackground information and original performance circumstances- This piece is a Madrigal. - Madrigals were massively popular amongst the "educated classes" of late Elizabethan England. They might have been sung by the family and guests as after-dinner entertainment (they were a bundle of laughs weren't they?!). - They were highly flexible and could be played by any assortment of voices or instruments, as long as they could offer the required ranges. - This is a light-hearted type of madrigal, known as a ballet, characterised by syllabic word setting,dancing rhythms (tripple time rhythms with dotted notes, syncopation --alto bars 7 and 12-- also use of hemiola -- bars 20-21) and a 'fa-la' refrain
Tonality- There is no key signature, but it is obvious that the home key of the whole thing is G major. This can be seen in the principal cadences: bars 21-22, 30-31, 52-53, 61-62 and 83-84. - The key is also easy to see in the first sporano part on page 349 where there is an ascent from the dominant to the tonic via F sharp, the crucial leading note of G major. - The melody in bars 13-18 modulates to C major, the subdominant key. - The 'fa-la' refrain begins with a modulation to D major, the dominant key (bars 8 - 11) and then returns to G major, the tonic (bars 12 - 14)
God this is boring isnt it???- Everything said about the first 22 bars can be said for the second half aswell, because it is exactly the same, musically, the 1st and second soprano parts have just swapped in order to give a bit of variation for the singers. - In bars 14-15, the appearance of an adjacent chord of F major (a chord of the flat leading note is very common in English Madrigal style) and E minor is a truly modal aspect of the piece, which hints at the fact that Weelkes was not fully aware of his use of diatonic music, for he is still influenced by the more traditional modalities of the time. - Bars 19-22 are all tonics and dominants - very tonal!!! - All of the chords in the first section are in root position or first-inversion triads. - The only on-beat dischords are the half-beat suspensions where syncopations occur in the alto and tenor parts. - The last suspension (bar 21) is nor prepared, the alto G crashes into the minim A in the first soprano, making a consonant 4th
Texture- The texture is mainly 5 part counterpoint. Short rests are used to draw attention to the imitative entries that follow them. - HOWEVER, contrast is provided in the form of homorhythmic and homophonic sections that are easily visible on the score (i.e. I can't be arsed to look them up for you) - On page 349, there are three point of imitation: 1. "Sing we at pleasure" - sops 1 and 2 only 2. "Content is our treasure" - paired imitation in which the parts sung together by soprano 2 and the tenor are imitated one bar later by soprano 1 and bass 3. "Fa-la-la-la" - bass then soprano 2 then soprano 1 followed by another 9 entries in those parts. - In the setting of the next two couplets (bars 22-43) there are two points of imitation: 1."Whilst we his praises sing" - cross rhythms that threaten to disrupt the tripple metre. 2."Shall dancing ever sing" - more paired imitation. tenor and sop 1 are immitated by sop 2 and bass two bars later. - The alto is often confined to an inner pedal
Structure- Like most ballets, Sing We At Pleasure is in binary form. Both sections end with a 'fa la' refrain and both are repeated. This is what the structure looks like: Section 1bars 1-8 first couplet bars 8-22 first refrain repeat of section 1 Section 2bars 22-31 second couplet bars 31-43 third couplet bars 43-53 second refrain repeat of section 2 with soprano exchange
Monteverdi, Ohime, se tanto amateWell, first of all, lets say that this song is about sex, I know, I study italian, and those are not clean lyrics. So hey, this song is instantly more interesting :D Okay, okay, back to the official stuff.
Background information and original performance circumstances- In contrast to Weelkes's light-hearted ballet, this peice is a serious madrigal with "sophisticated text" (although I fail to see how writing smut is considered sophisticated :P) by Guarini, a major Italian lyric poet of the time. - It is written for highly trained proffesionals to perform at private concerts to aristrocratic audiences. Amateurs did not sing this as home. Although I'd give it a good crack. - Monteverdi uses representational style meaning he wanted to reflect the subject of the text in his music. "Ohime" can be directly translated as the shakespearean or Dumbledorean "alas!" or else as the sighs of lovers (I know which one I prefer...) - Note that the italian verb "morire" means "to die" and in Italy and England at the time was used as a euphemism for sexual release (phwoarrr) - The music is almost completely governed by the text, so we will look at it in sections.
Bars 1-4- "Ohime" is set as a falling third, falling from a weak beat to a strong beat. Basically, it sounds like a sigh. - An exchange of sighs represented as dialogue between the male and female voices (the alto in this peice is also male) - unprepared dissonance (bar 2 beat 2 and bar 4 beat 2) is representative of their ardour. - A false relation between the quinto's F sharp in bar 2 and the alto's F natural in bar 3 also represents sexual whatnots. - As soon as G minor has been established as the tonic (which is is, of the whole madrigal) it is once again banished in bars 3-4 where B flat Major appears, muddied by the E natural.
bars 5-11- There are sighs of "Ohime" ("Oh my!") and "deh perche fate" ("why are you doing this, you bastard?", or something to that effect...). Monteverdi, being one of the first operatic writers, was showing that two ideas could be put across in very close succesion; the idea of frustrated questions, and amorous sighs.
bars 12-19- There is a free sequence in the form of bars 10-11 repeated a 3rd higher in bars 12-13, then a 4th higher in bars 14-15. - The question "why, if you like to hear me sigh, do you condemn me to die?" (heheheheheh: secks.) is dissonant and chromatic, representational of frustration. It leads to a perfect cadence in D minor (with tierce de picardie in bar 19). 'And here, for one night only, additional information about the dissoinances in this section'
At this point I almost swore with releif that this part of the notes were over, but read the terms and conditions and realised that that could be considered as "vulgar"
...General things to notice- There are differeing textures, ranging from thee-part and five-part homophony (bars 20-23, 29-33) - The extraordinary also part in bar 56. There is a truly awesome false relation between the F sharp and the F natural nearly two octaves above in the canto part. - The dominant pedal and interlocking suspensions in the closing bars, which lead to a final "Ohime" , set to the pogression of IIIb-I with a tierce de picardie on the last chord. This unusual type of perfect cadence gives the listener absolutely no doubt about the lovers success in acheiving what they set out to do, so to speak. A most weary finality. - This piece is through-composed, meaning that each section of the poem has new music, the structure being determined by the text. However the calls of "Ohime" do act as a unifying device throughout the piece.
Gershwin: 'Summertime' from 'Porgy and BessBefore I start with these notes, in case you lost all hope in the capabilities of Gerswin to produce a successful piece of music, check this out THERE IS HOPE YET! Okay, moving on. Background information and original performance circumstances- "Summertime" comes from Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess", a work that is as much at home on Broadway as it is in an Opera House - i.e. it is modern, 20th century and contempary. - The opera is based on a short novel "Porgy" by DuBose Heyward. - The story is all about the impoverished lives of the black community in South Carolina, at the beginning of the 20th century. - It's full of jazz and folk influence of the 1920's and 30's Rhythm and metre- There are printed syncopations that are known as leans (note sung just after the beat) bar 15 and pushes (note sung just before the beat) bar 16. - |
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