Lecture Notes
TimeMap
TimeMap helps you to explore and compare music that was composed at the same time and/or in close geographical proximity. (Image courtesy of Natasha Skowronski. Used with permission.)
TimeMap (best viewed with Firefox and Safari browsers)
One of the hardest parts of learning music history (and I suppose art and other histories as well) is that though styles change over time, the changes happen extremely scattered with little uniformity. Thus students tend to believe that a more "advanced" sounding piece was composed later than a "simpler" sounding one, when the opposite is also extremely likely to be true. One of the biggest recurring problems for learning style in Early Music, for instance, is that the most commonly studied pieces in English Renaissance style are being composed at the same time or after the Italians created new techniques of recitative, basso continuo, and other markers of the Baroque.
TimeMap, a tool developed by myself and Natasha Skowronski (MIT '10), allows viewers to see what pieces were being composed at the same time or in close geographical spans of each other. Each piece (taken from a mix of my syllabus and Craig Wright's Music in Western Civilization) has a thirty second excerpt online while a few others have associated YouTube videos.
Lecture Notes
| SES # | TOPICS | LECTURE NOTES |
|---|---|---|
| Unit 1: Introduction, chant, and medieval music | ||
| 1 | Introduction Music in the medieval western church Cycles of the day and of the year Form of the mass and of the office | (PDF) |
| 2 | Preamble: Music in the Greek and Roman world Mode and chant Types of chants Reading modern chant notation Practice singing the office of sext | (PDF) |
| 3 | Types of chants (cont.) Office review Chant manuscripts and notation Syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic chants Hexachords and the Guidonian hand | (PDF) |
| 4 | Non-Gregorian chant Modern chant books Innovation in the chant repertoire (sequences, tropes) Liturgical drama and the compositions of Hildegard of Bingham Other chant traditions in the west and elsewhere The unending tradition of chant | (PDF) |
| Bridge 1: From chant to 1315 | ||
| 5 | Secular monophony in the middle ages Troubadours and trouvères Court life in the later middle ages Discussion of previous assignment Polyphony before the Magnus Liber Theoretical sources and prehistory Musica Enchiriadis Earliest practical sources Conductus | (PDF) |
| 6 | Polyphony in Paris (Notre Dame) and in the early 13th century Anonymous IV Leonin and Perotin Organum and Discant Modal rhythm Ars antiqua motet: Introduction | (PDF) |
| 7 | Music in the 13th and early 14th century Motets become secular Ars antiqua manuscripts Instrumental music: Danses reals Roman de Fauvel Philippe de Vitry Isorhythm and hocket Listening quiz 1 | (PDF) |
| Unit 2: Music in the (mainly Italian) fourteenth century | ||
| 8 | Guillaume de Machaut and music in France before 1370 Machaut, poet and musician Formes fixes Motets and mass Reims vs. court life Machaut and the Gesamtausgabe | (PDF) |
| 9 | Trecento music 1 Discussion and performance of Se per dureça Principles of Italian notation Jacopo da Bologna and the madrigal Francesco and the ballata | (PDF) |
| 10 | Trecento music 2: New trends in our knowledge of Italian music Squarcialupi codex Other sources Zachara da Teramo and the Parody mass Johannes Ciconia and the Motet | (PDF) |
| 11 | Simplicity and complexity Keyboard music Cantus Planus Binatim Ars Subtilior | (PDF) |
| Bridge 2: The continental renaissance | ||
| 12 | The Renaissance and music 1420-1460 Guillaume Du Fay and his contemporaries The English sound Fauxbourdon Motets and cyclic masses Ockeghem and the canon | (PDF) |
| 13 | Vocal music: Josquin, his contemporaries, and his followers Patronage Documents and manuscripts Josquin and his (or someone else's?) innovations; "Ave Maria" "The pervasive myth of pervasive imitation" | (PDF) |
| 14 | Other innovations in continental music, 1460-1550 Palestrina and Lasso Dance and keyboard music Instrumental forms French song Protestantism and music | (PDF) |
| Unit 3: Elizabethan London | ||
| 15 | From Dunstaple to Elizabeth: Tudor England The Elizabethan Madrigal (Weelkes, Gibbons, etc.) and its Italian predecessors Music printing | (PDF) |
| 16 | Chapel Royal Catholicism and Anglicanism in England (William Byrd) Music education, instruction, and theory (Thomas Morley) | (PDF) |
| 17 | Instrumental music and lute song (Doug Freundlich, guest performer/lecturer) Dowland and lute song Consort music Jane Pickering lute book ("Toys;" "Maids in Constrite") "Can she excuse?" "Woods so Wild?" (William Byrd setting no. 30) "Fitzwilliam virginal book" | (PDF) |
| 18 | Music in society: The cries of London More secular music in England More keyboard music In Nomine music Listening quiz 2 | (PDF) |
| Bridge 3: Missed traditions in the late renaissance | ||
| 19 | Chromaticism in the late 16th-century Italian madrigal The dances and writings of Michael Praetorius | (PDF) |
| Topic 4: Music in Venice 1570-1660 | ||
| 20 | Maestri di cappella Venice: (Rore), Williaert (Andrea and) Giovanni Gabrieli and music in the Basilica of S. Marco Cori spezzati. Gabrieli's music for brass Preamble to the Baroque and the rise of a new style: Florentine Camerata; Peri, Cavalieri, etc. (early monody) Basso Continuo | (PDF) |
| 21 | Monteverdi (1567-1642) before and in Venice | (PDF) |
| 22 | Opera in Venice after Monteverdi Barbara Strozzi Venice's influence: Heinrich Schütz Instrumental music in Venice | (PDF) |
| Conclusion: Other baroque music / music towards the end of the seventeenth century | ||
| 23 | Non-Venetian developments: Oratorio: Carissimi, Jephte Jewish music published in Venice Church music towards the end of the century | (PDF) |
| 24 | Music in the 1680s | (PDF) |
