Rationalism and Its Impact on Music

1. Rationalism and Its Impact on Music

2. “Baroque” • Used to identify period in art and music history before 1600 to about 1750 • Originally a pejorative word — overornamented, distorted, grotesque — used by critics from later periods • does not apply to all arts of that period — e.g., French academic dramatists Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) and Jean Racine (1639–1699), painter Jan Vermeer (1632–1675) • certainly does not reflect artists’ ideas in the period • music includes a variety of styles over long period

3. Rationalist principles • Reason supersedes received authority from church or ancients • Francis Bacon (1561–1626) — clearing away errors in thinking • René Descartes (1596–1650) • Discourse on Method (1637) — principles of rationalism • The Passions of the Soul (1649) — important for aesthetics • Aesthetic presuppositions • Humanism — to portray the idea, “imitate” the “sense” of words • Gioseffe Zarlino, Istitutione armoniche (1558) • Thomas Morley, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) • Rationalism — to move the audience, imitate rhetorical speech • pathos rather than ethos; affetto rather than virtù • Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (1581)

4. Historical factors in the seventeenth century • Courts — important for arts • major powers • France, absolutism under Bourbons in Paris • Hapsburg empire — centered in Austria • principalities in Germany (electors for Holy Roman Empire) and Italy • constitutional monarchy in England • Civil War, 1642 • Commonwealth, 1649 • Stuart Restoration, 1660 • Church — important for the arts • Roman Catholicism — Jesuitism • Lutheranism (Orthodox Lutheran and Pietist branches) • Church of England

5. Important commercial cities in the seventeenth century • Venice — port (Adriatic) • Hamburg — port (North Sea) • Leipzig — center for publishing • London — capital and trade center

6. Monody and basso continuo Camerata — amateurs in Florence interested in Classical antiquity • Giovanni de’ Bardi (1543–1612) — host, nobleman, writer (Discourse on ancient and modern singing, ca. 1578) • Girolamo Mei (1519–1594) — scholar in Greek literature; lived in Rome, letters to Florence • Vincenzo Galilei (late 1520s to 1591) — lutenist and singer, theorist (Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna, 1581) • objection to polyphonic song on principle • monodic texture based on Mei’s information about Greek drama • rhetoric as model for moving affections

7. Monodic texture — homophony • Vocal part • declamation influenced by existing formulas for singing strophic poems, Camerata’s theories • ornamentation (derived from Renaissance improvisation in polyphony) • Bass treatment • Renaissance basso seguente — essentially lowest line • basso continuo from ca. 1590s • real, independent part as polar opposite of melody, freeing vocal bass • addition of figures — practical, but optional • Giulio Caccini (ca. 1545–1618) — singer and composer • Le nuove musiche (1602) — explained and illustrated new style

8. Caccini, Le nuove musiche (1601)

9. Concertato scoring • New ideal — exploit heterogeneous performers • from Latin concertare — to contend or fight • unlike humanist ideal of homogeneous, a cappella sound • Usages of term • sixteenth century — colla parte (e.g., Cristoforo Malvezzi, 1589, reports that a madrigal was “concertato” with instruments) • 1587 — Gabrieli collection — first use in title • polychoral, voices and instruments • 1602 — Lodovico Grossi da Viadana, Cento concerti ecclesiastici • one or more singers with organ basso continuo • 1610 — Monteverdi, 1615 Giovanni Gabrieli • voices and instruments, independent, idiomatic roles

10. Seconda pratica harmony • Sixteenth-century harmonic style — panconsonance • theorist — Zarlino, Istitutione harmoniche (1558) • Mannerism — chromaticism and cross-relations • e.g., Carlo Gesualdo (ca. 1561–1613) • Seconda pratica • new dissonances permitted — including accented passing tones and neighboring tones, appoggiaturas, escape tones • G. M. Artusi (ca. 1540–1613) — attacked dissonances in new style with score (no text) examples from madrigals by Monteverdi, 1600 • Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) — reply in Foreword prefacing Madrigals, Book 5 (1605), amplified by Dichiarazione in Scherzi musicale (1607) by his brother Giulio Cesare Monteverdi (1573 to ca. 1630), justifying unusual harmony as rhetorical expression of text’s affect

11. Questions for discussion • How does the change from Humanist to Rationalist aesthetics and musical style compare to the change at the beginning of Humanism? • How are rational and passionate aspects of musical experience kept in balance or synthesized in seventeenth-century musical thought and style? • Compare basso continuo texture to earlier textures in Western music.