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Medieval, Early and Baroque Music

trencherman

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As I reported in the Classical Music thread, more than a third of my daily music diet is now early and baroque music. Thanks to Youtube we can now come across great music we’ve never heard before and then once our interest is peaked, are able to delve deeper into it with Wiki. In this thread, I would like to invite everyone to call to our attention early, medieval and baroque music they have discovered of late.
 
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trencherman

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I’m going to start with Bach’s supposed favourite instrument, the clavichord which a lot of us would not have heard (even if our near neighbour keeps and plays one) because of the faint and ephemeral sound it produces. Here played by Frederich Gulda on his special clavichord which had to be amplified for the concert audience. The sound brings to mind the attempts of an electronic music pioneer, Wendy Carlos who incidentally, was the second transgender I ever heard of (Christine Jorgensen was the first).

 

gorgik9

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A couple of years ago my GH friend zortek sent me a PM asking if I would like to co-operate on a thread on Medieval Music he was thinking about to launch. I whined and protested lamely saying that I'm no big expert on medieval music...I mean OK I like it & got a few dozen CD records on this topic and...

Let's say my GH friends are experts on knowing what will get me hooked - so of course I started preparing for a Medieval Music thread, making a lot of YT searches etc. But this thread didn't happen & I still don't really know why - but now you started this thread and, well, I got a lot of Medieval music stashed away in my virtual barn, so: beware :rofl:

My first contribution will be to state that I find the idea that calling the clavichord Johann Sebastian Bach's "favourite instrument" rather quirky...

The clavichord? Why not the organ?

This is Gert van Hoef playing Toccata and Fugue in d Minor (BWV 565):



Or why not the human voice? René Jacobs directing the magnificent Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248):



But what made me personally "hooked on Bach" some 30 years ago was his compositions for string instruments, let's say Jascha Heifetz playing the Chaconne in Partita nr 2 for solo violin (BWV 1004)...



...or Pau Casals playing the magisterial Cello Suite nr 5 in c Minor.

 

trencherman

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My first contribution will be to state that I find the idea that calling the clavichord Johann Sebastian Bach's "favourite instrument" rather quirky...

The clavichord? Why not the organ?

 

trencherman

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Thanks for the Schiff-video.

Do we have a written statement from Bach in a diary or a letter?

If we had more of his music we would have a different opinon.

No we don’t. Let's keep this conversation going (about after all a non-explosive subject) by avoiding subjecting it to formal rules of evidence.

We don’t have much biographical info on J. S. Bach like we do with Beethoven and Schubert but we do have lots of original manuscripts of his oeuvre. He is one of the most prolific composers of all time.
 

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Praetorius composed a seasonally performed church music for Christmas but it’s his selections of dances that brings back Christmas pasts more vividly to me. They sound like the carollers (who used primitive and improvised musical instruments) from my home town.

 

trencherman

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But what made me personally "hooked on Bach" some 30 years ago was his compositions for string instruments, let's say Jascha Heifetz playing the Chaconne in Partita nr 2 for solo violin (BWV 1004)...



Chaconne is one of Bach’s that I must have listened to more frequently of his body of work. As I mentioned in the Classical thread, initially on the classical guitar, then in Alicia de la Rocha’s powerful rendition of Busoni’s transcription for the piano but mostly from Nathan Milstein’s live performance I got from a bargain CD I picked up for $2 from a record store that was closing. I played it over the years as often as I could and if it were an LP would have been worn out just like certain others in my collection.
 

gorgik9

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Chaconne is one of Bach’s that I must have listened to more frequently of his body of work. As I mentioned in the Classical thread, initially on the classical guitar, then in Alicia de la Rocha’s powerful rendition of Busoni’s transcription for the piano but mostly from Nathan Milstein’s live performance I got from a bargain CD I picked up for $2 from a record store that was closing. I played it over the years as often as I could and if it were an LP would have been worn out just like certain others in my collection.

We obviously have a mutual love for the Chaconne, but I think that my first meeting with this magificent piece of violin music was on a vinyl LP from - probably - the early or mid 1980s with Itzhak Perlman performing the entire Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.

But before I met the works for solo violin it was the cello suites, in particular the nr 5 with Pau Casals. And of course the lute suites...
 

trencherman

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But what made me personally "hooked on Bach" some 30 years ago was his compositions for string instruments, let's say Jascha Heifetz playing the Chaconne in Partita nr 2 for solo violin (BWV 1004)...



Still on Jascha Heifetz who was as prodigious if not even more so than Yehudi Menuhin. I found this funny anecdote in his New York Times obit from 1987:

When Mr. Heifetz made his United States debut at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 27, 1917, two of the listeners were Leopold Godowsky, the pianist, and Mischa Elman. As the 16-year-old Mr. Heifetz played, the other violinist mopped his brow and remarked to Mr. Godowsky: ''It's rather warm in here.''

''Not for pianists,'' Mr. Godowsky responded.
 

trencherman

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Here’s another one that reminds me of Christmas by an Italian Baroque era Jesuit who went to the Southernmost region of Latin America to work with the Indians. Ennio Moriconne’s main music theme for the movie The Mission (1986) sounds as though it had been aptly influenced by Zipoli’s (not to be confused with Zeppole which is a type of Italian doughnut).

 

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The Franco-Flemish school of vocal polyphony: An introduction

I thought I should start posting a series of works from the Franco-Flemish (or Netherlandish) school of vocal polyphony, but I sensed that a lot of people probably don't know what I'm talking about and - hence! - I thought I should write a short introduction to begin with!

Since one of the notable accomplishments of this school and tradition of vocal music was the definitive launching of the Mass as an integrated musical genre, I'll start with talking a bit about the Mass.

The Mass as Catholic liturgy.

From the point-of-view of what texts are to be sung, a mass can be analyzed in two categories: 1) Ordinarium, i.e. the text which are always sung at every occasion. Since at least the 15th century the ordinarium has consisted of the following sequence of texts: a)Kyrie, b) Gloria, c) Credo, d) Sanctus, e) Agnus Dei.

2) Proprium, the texts sung depending on what feast is celebrated or on what day in the Liturgical calender.

The Mass as a genre of vocal music.

What did you do to transform the central kind of Catholic liturgy into a genre of vocal music? Well we know what the composers of the Franco-Flemish school did: 1) You chose a pre-existing melody and used it as the musical basis for all parts in your polyphonic composition. This melody was given the name cantus firmus (latin: "fixed song") in the musical theory of its time, and it's notable that many the Franco-Flemish composers often chose secular songs, sometimes quite bawdy secular songs, as their cantus firmus.

2) And then the composer went on using his cantus firmus of choice to compose all the parts of the Mass Ordinarium, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei. Voilà!

The Franco-Flemish School.

Most members of this school and tradition were born and raised in what today is the northernmost parts of France and Belgium, and they started their careers as singers, choirmasters and composers in the cathedrals in this area.

It's a tradition whose early members got a lot of inspiration from the English composer and choirmaster John Dunstable (1390-1453), and it can be thought of as having had five generations of which the first started working in the first half of the 15th century, and the last generation doing their work in the early years of the 17th century.

First generation (1420-1450): Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois.

Second generation (1450-1485): Ockeghem, Orto, Compère, Prioris, Agricola, Caron, Faugues, Regis, Tinctoris.

Third generation (1480-1520): Obrecht, de la Rue, Isaac, Brumel, Févin, Pipelare, Richafort, Divitis, Desprez.

Fourth generation (1520-1560): Gombert, Crecquillon, Manchicourt, Arcadelt, Rore, Willaert, Courtois, Clemens non Papa.

Fifth generation (1560-1615): Lasso, de Monte, Vaet, Regnart, Luython, Wert, de Macque, Rogier.
 

trencherman

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The musical equivalent of the "Northern Renaissance" in art in other words. But do go on.
 

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Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474)

Without a doubt Guillaume Dufay was the central figure in the first generation of the Franco-Flemish School.

Dufay used the very popular song "L'Homme Armé" ("The armed man") as cantus firmus for one of his masses, and we know of more than 40 polyphonic compositions based on this melody.

I'll post the first part - Kyrie - of Dufay's Missa L'Homme Armé and I'll do the same with other Franco-Flemish composers in the series of posts to follow!

 

gorgik9

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The musical equivalent of the "Northern Renaissance" in art in other words. But do go on.

There are reasons why I try to use the conventional labels of historical periods like "Middle Ages / Medieval" and "Renaissance" as little as possible. I think that these labels have a strong tendency not to enhance bot to diminish our understanding, and this because of the ideology infused in the labels:

So it was humanist historians writing in the wake of Petrarca, (historians like Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo) who started constructing what would become our conventional tripartite scheme of European history: Antiquity-Middle Ages-New Age, though this scheme didn't get fully conventional until the late 17th century.

While Petrarca argued that it was Christianity which ended the glory of Antiquity (and thus - being a pious Christian and catholic priest himself - portrayed himself as a part of the contemporary darkness) a later humanist like Bruni was somewhat more optimistic. Bruni's idea was that things were getting better and he coined his own term for the period in between the glorious Antiquity and the better times to come: media tempestas, "middle times" i.e. the Middle Ages.

In the next century art historian Giorgio Vasari started using the term rinascita as his favoured name for the "better times" he thougt he was experiencing in his own time, rinascita meaning "rebirth" - rebirth of the glorious Ancient art, language, literature and sciences.

However! It isn't until the mid 19th century with historians like Jules Michelet in France and Jacob Burckhardt in Switzerland that renaissance becomes THE Renaissance, the name of a defined period in history. And thus the renaissances can start multiplying: so we have the Carolingian renaissance in the 8th and 9th centuries, the Ottonian renaissance in the late 10th and early 11th century and of course the 12th century renaissance advertised by Charles Homer Haskins and Johan Nordström. Adding to this impressive list of renaissances we can have a "Northern Renaissance" and of course THE Renaissance in Italy (in particular in Florence and Rome).

But what's left of the Middle Ages?
 

gorgik9

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Johannes Ockeghem (1410/1425 - 1497)

The date of Ockeghem's birth is highly uncertain, somewhere in between 1410 and 1425. But it is certain that Ockeghem was considered the main figure of the second generation in the Franco-Flemish school.

 

trencherman

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There are reasons why I try to use the conventional labels of historical periods like "Middle Ages / Medieval" and "Renaissance" as little as possible. I think that these labels have a strong tendency not to enhance bot to diminish our understanding, and this because of the ideology infused in the labels:


But what's left of the Middle Ages?

Another reason may be your apparent proximity to the subject. Well and good for the specialists but these hair-splitting distinctions may be one of the reasons even interested laymen, even avid readers of history, tend to stay away from. We want something that appeals and not repels. Too many twigs and branches too often obscure the trees if not the forest.

Distinctions diminish with emotional as well as physical distance.
— Felipe Gonzales-Armesto
 

gorgik9

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Johannes Tinctoris (1435-1511)

Johannes Tinctoris belonged - like Ockeghem - to the second generation of the Franco-Flemish school. He wasn't just a choirmaster and composer, but also a pretty prolific writer of books on music theory.

 

gorgik9

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Josquin Desprez (1450/55 - 1521)

If anyone should be named the most important composer of the third generation of the Franco-Flemish school, it must definitely be Josquin Desprez.

 

gorgik9

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Another reason may be your apparent proximity to the subject. Well and good for the specialists but these hair-splitting distinctions may be one of the reasons even interested laymen, even avid readers of history, tend to stay away from. We want something that appeals and not repels. Too many twigs and branches too often obscure the trees if not the forest.

Distinctions diminish with emotional as well as physical distance.
— Felipe Gonzales-Armesto

Most probably you wont be surprised that I disagree with your analysis of the problem:

While quantitative distinctions can at least in parts depend on distance, qualitative distinctions - i.e. conceptual distinctions - doesn't depend on how close to or far away from something you are, and conceptual distinctions articulated in names, words and phrases are what I'm interested in.

Our thinking and judging depends on conceptual frameworks (quite often you need several different frameworks depending of the subject being thought about, and frameworks are historical - they change) and in my opinion they're also mutually dependant on the story or stories you want to tell. Different stories means different frameworks, different distinctions, and vice versa.

Depending on the story you want to tell, you'll want / need different distinctions.

However! I was wrong in implying that the word "renaissance" is problematic as such, but it's problematic if it's taken as an abbreviation of the Petrarch-Bruni-Vasari-Burckhardt story about the revival of the Ancient culture - which I think is just wrong, and it's still the way its commonly taken.

So let me give you a different Renaissance-story, a story I'm more comfortable with! The point-of-departure for this story is St. Francis of Assissi and the changes in the ways Christianity was percieved by him and his Franciscan followers, and all the changes in art and architecture the Franciscan movement brought about.

The Christmas crib was Francis own invention, and in my opinion that's exactly the center of what we call "Renaissance art". To my knowledge no one has explained this better than art historian, writer and journalist Andrew Graham Dixon, so here you go!

 

gorgik9

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Jacob Obrecht (1457/58 - 1505)

Obrecht belonged to the third generation like Desprez.

 
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