Up through the Middle Ages, Western music was dominated by the church; it was all sacred music. The most artistic and refined secular music came from twelfth- and thirteenth-century composers called troubadours and trouveres. Bernart de Ventadorn was one of the most popular troubadour poets of his time. Ben m’an Perdut tells a story of a man’s unreciprocated love and his decision to leave Ventadorn as a result. The first piece after the intermission is another composition of Bernart titled Tan tai mo cor ple de joya.
Comtessa de Dia, or “Beatrix comitissa,” was a female troubadour, or troubaritz. Her song A chantar is from the point of view of a woman who is in love and sings of the disdain of her male lover. A chantar is also significant for
Benjamin Banneker was a primarily self-educated child of a former slave who became a prominent African American renaissance man and activist during the 18th century. In 1791, Banneker wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson, the aim of which was to challenge Jefferson on the topics of slavery and racism, and hopefully get him to change his opinions and eventually take further action. He called upon tone, alluding to historical events, and juxtaposing the difference between Jefferson’s own writings and actions in order to drive his point home.
TitleAuthor/ EditorPublisherDate James Galways’ Music in TimeWilliam MannMichael Beazley Publishers1982 The Concise Oxford History of MusicGerald AbrahamOxford University Press1979 Music in Western CivilizationPaul Henry LangW. W. Norton and Company1941 The Ultimate Encyclopaedia of Classical MusicRobert AinsleyCarlton Books Limited1995 The Cambridge Music GuideStanley SadieCambridge University Press1985 School text: Western European Orchestral MusicMary AllenHamilton Girls’ High School1999 History of MusicRoy BennettCambridge University Press1982 Classical Music for DummiesDavid PogueIDG Books Worldwide,Inc1997
Atlas, Allan W. Renaissance Music: Music in Western Europe, 1400-1600. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1998.
Very different from traditional writings of the past was the new flourish of troubadour poetry. Troubadour poetry, derived of courtly romances, focused on the idea of unrequited love. “A young man of the knightly class loved a lady”, most often, “the lady was married to the young man’s lord”. The courtly lover would compose highly lyrical and erotic poems in honor of his lady, and the troubadour was filled with rapture even at the slightest kindness that the lady might offer him.3 This new literary artifice provides us clues to the cultural changes that took place in medieval Europe during this time.
For almost half a century, the musical world was defined by order and esteemed the form of music more highly than the emotion that lay behind it. However, at the turn of the 19th century, romantic music began to rise in popularity. Lasting nearly a century, romantic music rejected the ideas of the classical era and instead encouraged composers to embrace the idea of emotionally driven music. Music was centered around extreme emotions and fantastical stories that rejected the idea of reason. This was the world that Clara Wieck (who would later marry the famous composer, Robert Schumann) was born into. Most well known for being a famous concert pianist, and secondly for being a romantic composer, Clara intimately knew the workings of romantic music which would not only influence Clara but would later become influenced by her progressive compositions and performances, as asserted by Bertita Harding, author of Concerto: The Glowing Story of Clara Schumann (Harding, 14). Clara’s musical career is an excellent example of how romantic music changed from virtuosic pieces composed to inspire awe at a performer’s talent, to more serious and nuanced pieces of music that valued the emotion of the listener above all else.
R. W. Southern's 'From Epic to Romance' traces the shift of thoughts and feelings from the early to high medieval era. Not only does he paint the religious changes well, but also how these new ideas spilled over into the secular world. Once the twelfth century writers fueled the spark of romanticism, the epic was doomed. Southern show how the thoughts of God and a limited world made The Song of Roland a classical early medieval epic and that the new concepts in ecclesiastical and social circles illuminated the increasing romantic sentiment such as those found in Ywain.
Unlike Schönberg, his student Anton von Webern did not make many comments about the relationship between text and music in his works. His George-settings appear rather different to Schönberg’s in their relationship to the text. He was guided much more by declamatory and rhythmical aspects of the poetry than Schönberg.
Taruskin, R., & Taruskin, R. (2010). Music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
John Warrack, author of 6 Great Composers, stated, “Any study of a composer, however brief, must have as its only purpose encouragement of the reader to greater enjoyment of the music” (Warrack, p.2). The composers and musicians of the Renaissance period need to be discussed and studied so that listeners, performers, and readers can appreciate and understand the beginnings of music theory and form. The reader can also understand the driving force of the composer, whether sacred or secular, popularity or religious growth. To begin understanding music composition one must begin at the birth, or rebirth of music and the composers who created the great change.
According to Michael Freeman in "The World of Courtly Love," the style of music of the courtly love was developped by the "troubadours" who were musicians as well as poets in the first half of the twelfth centry. The courtly love is a particular music which the "troubadour" idolises a woman who is in a higher social status than he is. He loves her and admires her but, the difference in their social stauses makes him away from the woman. Therefore, he puts his feeling from love for her to jerous for rivals in his music and, he performs for himself or for a small audience.
As in the virelais, one found two types of melody. One is pure and another one is folksong like, the other synthetic and similar to melismatic, decorated line of the ballades. The typical trochaic major Prolation of the Vitry and Machaut motets occurs notably in two works. It seem that Machaut work is ongoing. His biggest goal was to develop “ballades”, which symbolized in his Rondeaux and Virelais. The twenty-three motets found in traditional pattern and them three all written in France and Latin word. Therefore, Machauts started with traditional form of polyphony music, only to realize that it will be unnecessary to have more than one voice singing text in love song. Machaut show complete master of subtleties of the late Ars Nova. It was in the direction of rhythmic and extreme syncopation the late fourteenth century. The Ars nova had tremendous impact on his history of the music. Phillip De Virty would be large influence on the next generation of the composers. Especially Guilllame De Machaut. The new notation system would spread throughout Europe and eventually began to develop in to the modern musical notation system that used today”. Therefore, Phillip de Vitry and Guillaume De Machaut play huge rules in Ars Nova
The reputations of Maria Callas and Madonna as divas have both been earned for different reasons and yet, both can easily place their titles next to each other. All their musical performances have and are adapted to suit the public eye and sheltered by each singer’s creative influence, in order to improve their labels as divas. √ you give your reader a sense of the discussion that will follow, which is good.
The troubadours enjoyed sharing stories about fin’amor, or courtly love. The trobairitz were no different when it came to talking about untouchable love. Many of these poems began as an exchange of letters from one party to the next, finally resulting in a song. Many of these letters were collected in a manuscript and the credits of the songs are given solely to the man who initiated the exchange. It is difficult to distinguish the gender of the author without knowing more about the song because most of the songs were written about women, and they could have been written by a woman speaking as a man or by a man speaking as a woman. Both men and women also wrote songs from their own perspective. Most of the information found on the author
France was not the only place in the world whose literature was developing and changing in influential and creative forms. However, French literature underwent the most changes and eventually influenced other places. France started developments that spread to places like England and Italy. It is to be noted, however, that many other places had great artists. For example, there were Dante and Petrarca from Italy. This also did not occur only in Europe, as literature also thrived in the Arab and Oriental worlds. Nevertheless, the importance of France is that that is where the changes began, and that is where the most abundant changes are found. In the Middle Ages poets in France undertook a new style, with new thematic elements influenced by feudalism, courtly love, and the troubadours who pushed the movement further. The new flourishing poetry would impact ...
Stapleton-Corcoran, Erin. "Music, Romantic: After 1850." Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850. London: Routledge, 2003. Credo Reference. Web. 18 April 2014.