Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect

Adrian Willaert and the Theory of Interval Affect

Author: Timothy R. McKinney

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1317185315

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In the writings of Nicola Vicentino (1555) and Gioseffo Zarlino (1558) is found, for the first time, a systematic means of explaining music's expressive power based upon the specific melodic and harmonic intervals from which it is constructed. This "theory of interval affect" originates not with these theorists, however, but with their teacher, influential Venetian composer Adrian Willaert (1490-1562). Because Willaert left no theoretical writings of his own, Timothy McKinney uses Willaert's music to reconstruct his innovative theories concerning how music might communicate extramusical ideas. For Willaert, the appellations "major" and "minor" no longer signified merely the larger and smaller of a pair of like-numbered intervals; rather, they became categories of sonic character, the members of which are related by a shared sounding property of "majorness" or "minorness" that could be manipulated for expressive purposes. This book engages with the madrigals of Willaert's landmark Musica nova collection and demonstrates that they articulate a theory of musical affect more complex and forward-looking than recognized currently. The book also traces the origins of one of the most widespread musical associations in Western culture: the notion that major intervals, chords and scales are suitable for the expression of happy affections, and minor for sad ones. McKinney concludes by discussing the influence of Willaert's theory on the madrigals of composers such as Vicentino, Zarlino, Cipriano de Rore, Girolamo Parabosco, Perissone Cambio, Francesco dalla Viola, and Baldassare Donato, and describes the eventual transformation of the theory of interval affect from the Renaissance view based upon individual intervals measured from the bass, to the Baroque view based upon invertible triadic entities.


A Companion to Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice

A Companion to Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13: 9004358307

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This book offers an overview of all facets of musical life in sixteenth-century Venice. It addresses the city’s institutions (churches, confraternities, and academies) against the background of public and private occasions of music making. Supported by a generous collection of archival, literary, and iconographical sources, it treats both ceremonial life in the Serenissima and private forms of patronage. The Companion also addresses the dense web of musical activity (from chapel masters and singers to instrumentalists and instrument makers to music printers and theorists) and the rich variety of styles and musical genres (the frottola, the madrigal, motets and masses, instrumental music, polychoral music, Venetian-language polyphony), broadening the geographical perspective beyond the Veneto to Istria and Dalmatia. Contributors are Rodolfo Baroncini, Sherri Bishop, Bonnie J. Blackburn, David Bryant, Ivano Cavallini, Paolo Da Col, Daniel Donnelly, Rebecca Edwards, Iain Fenlon, Jonathan Glixon, Don Harrán (†), Jeffrey Kurtzman, Giulio M. Ongaro, Francesco Passadore, Elena Quaranta, Katelijne Schiltz, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, and Giovanni Zanovello.


Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice

Metrical Psalmody in Print and Practice

Author: Timothy Duguid

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1317096967

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During the Reformation, the Book of Psalms became one of the most well-known books of the Bible. This was particularly true in Britain, where people of all ages, social classes and educational abilities memorized and sang poetic versifications of the psalms. Those written by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins became the most popular, and the simple tunes developed and used by English and Scottish churches to accompany these texts were carried by soldiers, sailors and colonists throughout the English-speaking world. Among these tunes were a number that are still used today, including ’Old Hundredth’, ’Martyrs’, and ’French’. This book is the first to consider both English and Scottish metrical psalmody, comparing the two traditions in print and practice. It combines theological literary and musical analysis to reveal new and ground-breaking connections between the psalm texts and their tunes, which it traces in the English and Scottish psalters printed through 1640. Using this new analysis in combination with a more thorough evaluation of extant church records, Duguid contends that Britain developed and maintained two distinct psalm cultures, one in England and the other in Scotland.


Open Access Musicology

Open Access Musicology

Author: Louis Epstein

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-05-05

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1643150502

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Open Access Musicology (OAM) publishes peer-reviewed, scholarly essays primarily intended to serve students and teachers of music history, ethno/musicology, and music studies. The constantly evolving collection ensures that recent research and scholarship inspires classroom practice. OAM essays provide diverse and methodologically transparent models for student research, and they introduce different modes of inquiry to inspire classroom discussion and varied assignments. Addressing a range of histories, methods, voices, and sounds, OAM embraces changes and tensions in the field to help students understand music scholarship. In service of our student- and access-centered mission, Open Access Musicology is a free collection of essays, written in an engaging style and with a focus on modes of inquiry rather than coverage of content. Our authors draw from their experience as scholars but also as teachers. They not only make arguments, but also describe why they became musicologists in the first place and explain how their individual paths led to the topics they explore. Like most scholarly literature, the essays have all been reviewed by experts in the field. Unlike most scholarly literature, the essays have also been reviewed by students at a variety of institutions for clarity and relevance. These essays are intended for undergraduates, graduate students, and interested readers without any particular expertise. They can be incorporated into courses on a range of topics as standalone readings, used to supplement textbooks, or read with an eye to new scholarly insights. The topics introduce and explore a variety of subjects, practices, and methods but, above all, seek to stimulate classroom discussion on music history’s relevance to performers, listeners, and citizens. Open Access Musicology will never pretend to present complete histories, cover all elements of a subject, or satisfy the agenda of every reader. Rather, each essay provides an opening to further contemplation and study. We invite readers to follow the thematic links between essays, pursue notes or other online resources provided by authors, or simply repurpose the essay’s questions into new and exciting forms of research and creativity. Volume 2 of OAM expands the disciplinary, topical, and geographical ranges of our endeavor, with essays that rely on ethnographic and music theoretical methods as well as historical ones. The essays in this volume touch on music from Europe, South America, and Asia, spanning the 16th century to the present. Throughout, the contributing authors situate music in political, religious, racial, economic, and other cultural and disciplinary contexts. This volume therefore expands what scholars generally mean when they refer to “musicology” and “music,” always with an eye toward relevance and accessibility.


European Music, 1520-1640

European Music, 1520-1640

Author: James Haar

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13: 184383894X

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Chronological surveys of national musical cultures (in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Spain), genre studies (Mass, motet, madrigal, chanson, instrumental music, opera), as well as essays on intellectual and cultural developments and concepts relevant to music (music theory, printing, the Protestant Reformation and the corresponding Catholic movement, humanism, the concepts of "Renaissance" and "Baroque").


A History of Emotion in Western Music

A History of Emotion in Western Music

Author: Michael Spitzer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-09-14

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0190061766

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When asked to describe what music means to them, most people talk about its power to express or elicit emotions. As a melody can produce a tear, tingle the spine, or energize athletes, music has a deep impact on how we experience and encounter the world. Because of the elusiveness of these musical emotions, however, little has been written about how music creates emotions and how musical emotion has changed its meaning for listeners across the last millennium. In this sweeping landmark study, author Michael Spitzer provides the first history of musical emotion in the Western world, from Gregorian chant to Beyoncé. Combining intellectual history, music studies, philosophy, and cognitive psychology, A History of Emotion in Western Music introduces current approaches to the study of emotion and formulates an original theory of how musical emotion works. Diverging from psychological approaches that center listeners' self-reports or artificial experiments, Spitzer argues that musical emotions can be uncovered in the techniques and materials of composers and performers. Together with its extensive chronicle of the historical evolution of musical style and emotion, this book offers a rich union of theory and history.


Polyphonic Minds

Polyphonic Minds

Author: Peter Pesic

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0262543893

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An exploration of polyphony and the perspective it offers on our own polyphonic brains. Polyphony—the interweaving of simultaneous sounds—is a crucial aspect of music that has deep implications for how we understand the mind. In Polyphonic Minds, Peter Pesic examines the history and significance of “polyphonicity”—of “many-voicedness”—in human experience. Pesic presents the emergence of Western polyphony, its flowering, its horizons, and the perspective it offers on our own polyphonic brains. When we listen to polyphonic music, how is it that we can hear several different things at once? How does a single mind experience those things as a unity (a motet, a fugue) rather than an incoherent jumble? Pesic argues that polyphony raises fundamental issues for philosophy, theology, literature, psychology, and neuroscience—all searching for the apparent unity of consciousness in the midst of multiple simultaneous experiences. After tracing the development of polyphony in Western music from ninth-century church music through the experimental compositions of Glenn Gould and John Cage, Pesic considers the analogous activity within the brain, the polyphonic “music of the hemispheres” that shapes brain states from sleep to awakening. He discusses how neuroscientists draw on concepts from polyphony to describe the “neural orchestra” of the brain. Pesic’s story begins with ancient conceptions of God’s mind and ends with the polyphonic personhood of the human brain and body. An enhanced e-book edition allows the sound examples to be played by a touch.


Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tone and its use in Polyphonic Music

Tonus Peregrinus: The History of a Psalm-tone and its use in Polyphonic Music

Author: Dr Mattias Lundberg

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1409455076

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Mattias Lundberg investigates the historical role of a deviant psalm-tone, the tonus peregrinus, focusing on its applications in polyphonic music within all major branches of Western liturgy. Throughout the remarkably persistent tradition of applying this melody to polyphony, from the ninth century right up to the twenty-first, coeval music theory is able to shed light on the problems it has posed to modal and tonal practice at various historical stages. The musical settings studied hold up a mirror to the general development of psalmody, concerning practices of organum, diverse regional forms of fauxbourdon, cantus firmus composition, free imitation, parody, fugue, quodlibet, monody, and many other compositional techniques where the unique features of the psalm-tone have necessitated modification of existing practices. The conclusions drawn reveal a musico-liturgical tradition that was not in real danger of extinction until the general decline of Western liturgy that followed in the eighteenth century, at which point the historiography of the tonus peregrinus became a factor stimulating scholarly and musical interest in its alleged pre-Christian origins. Lundberg demonstrates that the succession of works based on the tonus peregrinus often preserved a distinctly conservative musical and theological conception even during periods of drastic liturgical reform.


Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music

Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music

Author: da Sousa Correa Delia da Sousa Correa

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2020-07-23

Total Pages: 801

ISBN-13: 0748693149

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Provides a pioneering interdisciplinary overview of the literature and music of nine centuriesOffers research essays by literary specialists and musicologists that provides access to the best current interdisciplinary scholarship on connections between literature and musicIncludes five historical sections from the Middle Ages to the present, with editorial introductions to enhance understanding of relationships between literature and music in each periodCharts and extends work in this expanding interdisciplinary field to provide an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other mediaBringing together seventy-one newly commissioned original chapters by literary specialists and musicologists, this book presents the most recent interdisciplinary research into literature and music. In five parts, the chapters cover the Middle Ages to the present. The volume introduction and methodology chapters define key concepts for investigating the interdependence of these two art forms and a concluding chapter looks to the future of this interdisciplinary field. An editorial introduction to each historical part explains the main features of the relationships between literature and music in the period and outlines recent developments in scholarship. Contributions represent a multiplicity of approaches: theoretical, contextual and close reading. Case studies reach beyond literature and music to engage with related fields including philosophy, history of science, theatre, broadcast media and popular culture.This trailblazing companion charts and extends the work in this expanding interdisciplinary field and is an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other media.


A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Late Medieval, Reformation, and Renaissance Age

A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Late Medieval, Reformation, and Renaissance Age

Author: Susan Broomhall

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-08-20

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1350090921

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The period 1300-1600 CE was one of intense and far-reaching emotional realignments in European culture. New desires and developments in politics, religion, philosophy, the arts and literature fundamentally changed emotional attitudes to history, creating the sense of a rupture from the immediate past. In this volatile context, cultural products of all kinds offered competing objects of love, hate, hope and fear. Art, music, dance and song provided new models of family affection, interpersonal intimacy, relationship with God, and gender and national identities. The public and private spaces of courts, cities and houses shaped the practices and rituals in which emotional lives were expressed and understood. Scientific and medical discoveries changed emotional relations to the cosmos, the natural world and the body. Both continuing traditions and new sources of cultural authority made emotions central to the concept of human nature, and involved them in every aspect of existence.