Art Music

"Art music" is a somewhat broader term than "classical music" and may be defined for the purposes of this article as "establishment" music (either religious or secular) that is composed for pubic or private performance. By definition, it excludes popular musical forms (see below) that are based on folk music. In spite of the overlap that might exist in some music, these definitions are nevertheless helpful.

16th century and prior

plainsong

Plainsong is also called plainchant. More specific terms such as Gregorian chant, Ambrosian chant, Gallican chant are also found. Generally speaking, they all refer to a style of monophonic, unaccompanied, early Christian singing performed by monks and developed in the Roman Catholic Church mainly during the period 800-1000 . The differences may be marginal—or even great, in some cases. These differences reflect the great ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity that existed after the fall of the Roman Empire on the Italian peninsula. Different monastic traditions arose within the Roman Catholic Church throughout Italy, but at different places and at different times. Even a musical non-specialist can hear the difference, for example, between the straightforward tone production in the Ambosian chants from Milan and the chants from Benevento, which display a distinct "eastern" ornamental quiver in the voice, reflecting the vocal traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church. Yet, in spite of the differences, the similarities are great. In any event, the formal Gregorian chant was imposed throughout Italy by 1100, although the music of Greeks rites continued to be heard at various places on the peninsula, especially in those places which Byzantium had once held, such as Ravenna or in the southern peninsula, which had been a refuge for those Greeks fleeing the great Byzantine iconoclast controversies before the year 1000. Obviously, where Greek rites were practiced, the chants were sung in the Greek language and not in Latin, as they were in the Roman Catholic liturgy. Gregorian chant is also known as plainchant or plainsong and is a form of monophonic, unaccompanied singing, which was developed in the Catholic church, mainly during the period 800-1000. ... Saint Ambrose, Latin Sanctus Ambrosius, Italian SantAmbrogio (circa 340 - April 4, 397), bishop of Milan, was one of the most eminent fathers of the Christian church in the 4th century. ... The Gallican Rite is a historical sub-grouping of Christianity in western Europe; it is not a single rite but actually a family of rites within the Western Rite which comprised the majority use of most of Christianity in western Europe for the greater part of the 1st millennium AD... In music, the word texture is often used in a rather vague way in reference to the overall sound of a piece of music. ... For other uses, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... Monasticism (from Greek: monachos—a solitary person) is the religious practice of renouncing all worldly pursuits in order to fully devote ones life to spiritual work. ... The Roman Catholic Church (commonly known as the Catholic Church) is the Christian Church which is led by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, currently Pope Benedict XVI. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that it is the one holy catholic and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ. ... Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese dialect: Milán) is the main city in northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed region in Italy. ... Benevento is a town and archiepiscopal see of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 32 miles northeast of Naples. ... The Vladimir Icon, one of the most venerated of Orthodox Christian icons of the Virgin Mary. ... Byzantium was an ancient Greek city-state, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas. ... Ravenna is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. ... Illustration of the Beeldenstorm during the Dutch reformation Literally, iconoclasm is the destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. ... Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA — Hellenic) is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

(See Gregorian chant) Gregorian chant is also known as plainchant or plainsong and is a form of monophonic, unaccompanied singing, which was developed in the Catholic church, mainly during the period 800-1000. ...

Secular music

Secular music before the year 1500 was largely the work of jongleurs, troubadors and mimes. This was the age of the great vernacularization of language in Italy—indeed, throughout Europe; that is, people started to write and sing songs in their native language, which was not Latin, but whatever brand of vernacular medieval neo-Latin was spoken in their area. Thus, Dante showed with the Divine Comedy in 1300 that the common language (his was called "Tuscan" and not "Italian" until as late as the 1700s) could be a vehicle for fine literature. Logically, that extended to the lyrics of the songs that people sang. 1500 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the article about the night club in West Hollywood, California, see: Troubadour (nightclub). ... Dante redirects here. ... Dante shown holding a copy of The Divine Comedy, next to the entrance to Hell, the seven terraces of Mount Purgatory and the city of Florence, in Michelinos fresco. ...

Two points are worth mentioning in this regard: (1) we know a lot more about the words of songs than we know about the actual sound of the music. Words were written down with much more ease than melodies were notated. (See musical notation). Thus, we know that there was a vibrant troubador tradition in the twelfth century in the Provence in their language and we know that 1000 miles away on the island of Sicily there was also a vibrant troubador tradition at the Hohenstaufen court of Frederick II, songs sung in the dialect of the people (very much influenced, for example, by Arabic), but it is conjecture as to exactly what either one sounded like. We only know that southern French folk music, today, sounds quite a bit different than Sicilian folk music. Since folk music is relatively conservative in that it resists rapid change, we may assume that at least some of the obvious differences in melody, scales and approach to vocalising that exist now, existed then. It is interesting that the call and response nature of much popular choral singing in the Middle Ages—that is, a soloist singing a line that is then answered by a group—found its way into medieval church music as a way of involving all members of the congregation. Music notation is a system of writing for music. ... Flag of Provence Provence is a former Roman province and is now a region of southeastern France, located on the Mediterranean Sea adjacent to Frances border with Italy. ... Provençal (Prouvençau in Provençal language) is one of several dialects of the Romance language Occitan, which is spoken by a minority of people in southern France and other areas of France. ... Arms of the Hohenstaufen The Hohenstaufen were a dynasty of Kings of Germany, many of whom were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor and Dukes of Swabia. ... See: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194-1250, king 1211/12-1250, emperor since 1220) Frederick II of Austria (?-1246, duke of Austria 1230-1246) Frederick II of Sicily (1272-1337) - who called himself Frederick III - see the article for details. ... Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ...

The complicated polyphonies of what is called the Ars Nova began to be heard in the 1300s and 1400s; popular items such as madrigals employed increasing dense overlays of different melodies sung at the same time, the point being to create an interwoven and euphonious texture of sound; this is NOT the same as harmony, the sounding of many notes together in order to form a chord. That is a later invention. Nevertheless, the move from the monophonic sounds of chants to the many simultaneous melodies of polyphony does represent a revolution in our musical perceptions: to wit, you can have more one thing sounding at the same time and still find it pleasant to listen to. Polyphony is a musical texture consisting of several independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony). ... The ars nova was a stylistic period in music of the Late Middle Ages, centered in France, which encompassed the period from the publication of the Roman de Fauvel (1310 and 1314) until the death of Machaut (1377). ... Madrigal may refer to: Madrigal, Spain Trecento-Madrigal, a musical form of the 13th and 14th centuries Madrigal (music), a musical form of the 16th and 17th centuries Madrigal (literature) Madrigal may also be: A city in the computer game Myth The fictional character Anna Madrigal from Armistead Maupins... Harmony is the use and study of pitch simultaneity and chords, actual or implied, in music. ...

Renaissance

Most people do not think of music when they hear the term Renaissance. Yet, in the same sense that architects, painters, and sculptors of the 1500s were paying tribute to the newly rediscovered values of classical Greece, poets and musicians of that period attempted to do the same thing. The years between 1500 and 1600 are the most revolutionary period in European musical history; it is the century in which harmony was developed and the century that gave birth to opera. The Renaissance was a social, cultural and economic revolution which began a period of scientific revolution, religious reform, artistic and architectural development, and philosophical openness, and marks the beginning of modern European history. ... Harmony is the use and study of pitch simultaneity and chords, actual or implied, in music. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

These two developments are connected. Readers will have noted the move from the monophony of Gregorian chants to the complicated polyphonies of madrigals and other music of the few centuries before 1500. The next shift in musical perception involves a less common term: homophonic; that is, the sounding of a harmonic chord or progression of chords, not meant to stand out, but which support an obvious melody on top of the harmony.

The desire—perhaps need—for homophonic music arose from a number of factors. First, there was a rejection of overly complicated polyphony of many different melodies running at the same time: second, a general, new musical aesthetic of the period, best summed up in the words of Leonardo da Vinci in 1500, who said that music was "the simultaneous conjunction of proportional parts"—that is, the sounding together of notes based on simple arithmetic rations such as 2:1 (which produces the sound of an octave), 3:2 (which produces the sound of fifth), and 5:4 (which produces the sound of a major third). Thus, if you generate notes at 400, 600, 800, and 1000 cycles per second, you have all the notes of the simplest and most harmonious sound in our music—the major chord. It really is that simple. (See Musical Acoustics.) Third on the list of factors that make the 1500s so important was the Renaissance desire to tell a story, to put people up on a small stage and have them sing songs about Greek mythology—the tale of Orpheus, for example. That is difficult to do if everyone is singing a melody at the same time; thus, polyphony gave way to homophony, and early opera consisted of relatively simple melodies with texts about Greek mythology, sung in Italian and supported by simple harmonies. The important city in Italy in this development of music in the 1500s was Florence. Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, Italy, April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Cloux, France) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: an architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer, and painter. ... Musical acoustics or music acoustics is the branch of acoustics concerned with researching and describing the physics of music — how sounds employed as music work. ... The head of Orpheus, from an 1865 painting by Gustave Moreau. ... Founded 59 BC as Florentia Region Tuscany Mayor Leonardo Domenici (Democratici di Sinistra) Area  - City Proper  102 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 356,000 almost 500,000 3,453/km² Time zone CET, UTC+1 Latitude Longitude 43°47 N 11°15 E www. ...

(See Florentine Camerata , Vincenzo Galilei, Jacopo Peri, Palestrina, Corelli) The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. ... Vincenzo Galilei (1520 – July 2, 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and the father of the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei. ... Jacopo Peri (August 20, 1561 – August 12, 1633) was an Italian composer and singer, often called the inventor of opera. ... Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (born in Palestrina (Praeneste) near Rome, 1525, latest February 1, 1526 – February 2, 1594 in Rome) was an Italian composer of Renaissance music. ... Corelli could refer to: Corelli (television) - the television series Arcangelo Corelli - the composer This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Besides Florence, two other Italian cities are particularly worthy of mention in the period around 1600. There is somewhat of a friendly rivalry between advocates of the two cities as to which one is more important in the history of the development of music in Italy. Venice justly claims its place as the birthplace of commercial opera; Naples points to its own history of church-sponsored music conservatories, institutions that developed into "feeder-systems," providing composers and performing musicians for much musical life in Italy and, indeed, Europe as a whole.

(See Venice (classical music) and Music of Naples) The Venetian state and the city of Venice in Italy played an important role in the development of the music of Italy. ... Ciao, Raggazi Music of Naples is very cool ...

17th Century

Main article: Baroque music

The period from about 1600 to 1750 encompasses the musical Baroque. Many important things happened in this period. One was a return to the melodic complexities of polyphony, but this time—and this is a crucial difference—the melodies ran within a modern, established system of harmony based on chords and major and minor scales. This latter element is an extension of the concept of homophonic music (mentioned above) and allowed—even forced—melodic complexity to rise to dominance over the importance of text. (The struggle for dominance between text and music goes back to the music of the Greeks and is still going on in all forms of European art music and popular music.) This new dominance of melody within harmony at the expense of text led to great changes, including the expansion (through invention) of instrumental resources of the orchestra; the keyboard was extended in both directions; the making of stringed instruments such as those by Stradivarius became a great industry in Cremona; and instrumental music started to develop as a separate "track," quite apart from the traditional role of accompanying the human voice. Instrumental forms include such things as the sonata and fugue. Important names in music within this period in Italy are Alessandro Scarlatti, and Antonio Vivaldi, representing the importance of Naples and Venice, respectively, within this period. Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 to 1750 (see Dates of classical music eras for a discussion of the problems inherent in defining the beginning and end points). ... Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 to 1750 (see Dates of classical music eras for a discussion of the problems inherent in defining the beginning and end points). ... One of the violins in the Stradivarius collection of the Royal Palace, Madrid, Spain. ... This article is about the city of Cremona. ... Sonata (From Latin and Italian sonare, to sound), in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to cantata (Latin cantare, to sing), a piece sung. ... In music, a fugue is a type of piece written for counterpoint for several independent musical voices. ... Alessandro Scarlatti Alessandro Scarlatti (May 2, 1660 – October 24, 1725) was a Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. ... Unconfirmed portrait of Antonio Vivaldi Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (March 4, 1678 – July 28, 1741), nicknamed Il Prete Rosso, meaning The Red Priest, was an Italian priest and baroque music composer. ...

18th century

From the early 1700s to the end of that century encompasses what historians call "classical music". (Note that this use of the term "classical" does not correspond to what non-historians mean when they say "classical music"—that is, all opera and symphonic music, as opposed to "popular music".)

The term "classical" is appropriate for this period of music in that it marks the standardization of musical forms such as the symphony and concerto. Thus the term "classical" is used in the Renaissance sense of classical Greek philosophy—Platonic form, the idea that things such as beauty exist eternally as ideals, and that the artist's job—in this case, the composer's job—is put form on that ideal. Thus, we have, for example, a symphony formalized as a standard work in four movements for orchestra, and so forth. A symphony is an extended piece of music usually for orchestra and usually comprised of several movements. ... In classical music, the word concerto (pl. ... Plato Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn) (c. ...

The physical plant for composition and performance of music in Italy advanced greatly during this century. It is the period in which the great opera houses in Naples and Milano were built: the San Carlo Theater and La Scala, respectively. It is the age, as well, of the rise to prominence of the Neapolitan—and then Italian—Comic opera. Important, too, is refinding of some sense of balance between text and music in opera, largely through the librettos of Metastasio. The San Carlo is a famous opera house in Naples, Italy. ... La Scala This article is about the opera house. ... Comic opera is a subcategory of opera, and denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature. ... Pietro Trapassi (January 13, 1698 - April 12, 1782), Italian poet, is better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio. ...

Important Italian composers in this century are: Alessandro Scarlatti, Domico Scarlatti, Benedetto Marcello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Niccolò Piccinni, Giovanni Paisiello, Luigi Boccherini, Domenico Cimarosa, and Luigi Maria Cherubini. It is also the age in which "Italian music" became international, so to speak, with many of these Italian composers beginning to work abroad. Alessandro Scarlatti Alessandro Scarlatti (May 2, 1660 – October 24, 1725) was a Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. ... Benedetto Marcello (July 31 or August 1, 1686–July 24, 1739), was an Italian composer. ... Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (January 4, 1710 - March 16, 1736) was an Italian composer, violinist and organist. ... Niccolo Piccinni (January 16, 1728 - May 7, 1800) was an Italian composer of classical music. ... Paisiello at the clavichord, by Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, 1791. ... Luigi Boccherini (February 19, 1743 – May 28, 1805) was a classical era composer and cellist from Italy, mostly known for one particular minuet from one of his string quintets, and the cello concerto in B flat major (G 482). ... Domenico Cimarosa (December 17, 1749-January 11, 1801), Italian opera composer, was born at Aversa, in the kingdom of Naples. ...

(See European classical music and Classical music era). Classical music is a broad, somewhat imprecise term, referring to music produced in, or rooted in the traditions of, European art, ecclesiastical and concert music, encompassing a broad period from roughly 1000 to the present day. ... The Classical period in Western music occurred from about 1730 and 1820, but there was considerable overlap at both ends with preceding and following periods, as is true for all musical eras. ...

19th century

This is the century of Romanticism in European literature, art, and music. Romanticism in music is marked by many of the same characteristics that define that century's literature and painting: less attention to the formalities of classicism, more involvement of human passions such as love, heroism, courage, freedom, etc., all of which is a direct outgrowth of the humanism of the French Enlightenment. Italian opera tends to forsake the light-heartedness of the Comic opera for the more serious fare of Italian lyric Romanticsm. Although the ever-popular Rossini is certainly an exception to that, Italian music of the 19th century is dominated at the beginning by the likes of Bellini, Donizetti, and then, of course, for the last fifty years of the century by Giuseppe Verdi, the greatest musical icon in Italian history. It is also the time of the early career of Giacomo Puccini, perhaps the greatest composer of pure melody in the history of Italian music, and certainly the last one. Puccini is the bridge to the age of the new music of the 20th century. Romanticism was a secular and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ... Humanism is a broad category of active ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on our ability to determine what is right using the qualities innate to humanity, particularly rationality. ... ... Comic opera is a subcategory of opera, and denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature. ... Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (February 29, 1792 — November 13, 1868) was an Italian musical composer who wrote more than 30 operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. ... Bellini can mean: A family of Italian painters, the most famous of which is Giovanni Bellini (c. ... Categories: People stubs | 1797 births | 1848 deaths | Opera composers | Romantic composers | Italian composers | People born in Bergamo, Italy ... Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini, 1886 (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome) Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (October 10, 1813 – January 27, 1901) is to date the most influential composer of the 19th centurys Italian School of Opera. ... Giacomo Puccini Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini (December 22, 1858 – November 29, 1924) is regarded as one of the great operatic composers of the late 19th and early 20th century. ...

(Also see, Italian opera) Italian opera can be divided into three periods, the Baroque, the Romantic and the modern. ...

20th century

Romanticism in all European music certainly held on through the turn of century. In Italy, the music of Verdi and Puccini continued to dominate for a number of years. Other Italian Romantic composers—or at least composers who continued to compose in the tonal traditions of Western music (as opposed to the new atonality and dissonances of post-WWI Europe—composers who "made it" into the 20th century include Arrigo Boito, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Pietro Mascagni, Francesco Cilea, and Ottorino Respighi. Atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies, which characterizes the sound of classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. ... Arrigo Boito (February 24, 1842 – June 10, 1918) was an Italian poet, novelist and composer, best known today for his opera libretti and his own opera, Mefistofele. ... Ruggiero Leoncavallo (March 8, 1857 - August 9, 1919) was an Italian opera composer. ... Pietro Mascagni (Livorno December 7, 1863 – Rome August 2, 1945) is one of the most important Italian opera composers of the turn of the 20th century. ... Francesco Cilea, (Palmi, near Reggio Calabria, July 26, 1866 - Varazze, near Savona, November 20, 1950) was an Italian opera composer, whose early success was not sustained, as taste in music changed. ... Ottorino Respighi (born in Bologna on July 9, 1879, died in Rome on April 18, 1936) was an Italian composer and musicologist. ...

Yet, it was inevitable that Italian composers would respond to the fading values of Romanticism and the cynicism provoked in many European artistic quarters by such things as WWI and such cultural/scientific phenomena as psychoanalysis in which—at least according to Robert Louis Stevenson—"all men have secret thoughts that would shame hell." Romanticism—in spite of its lingering popularity with opera goers—died in the First World War. Romantic music in Italy, however, cannot be said to have died under its own weight, as one might say of the overlong and over-orchestrated works of the late Romantic music in Germany that gave way to Minimalist music. But abstraction and atonality and, simply, "difficult" music did come to Italy after the death of Puccini. Among the most important Italian names in 20th–century music are Luciano Berio, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Goffredo Petrassi. WWI may be an acronym for: World War I World Wrestling Industry This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer. ... This article is about a musical style. ... Luciano Berio (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian composer. ... Luigi Dallapiccola (February 3, 1904 – February 19, 1975) was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions. ... Goffredo Petrassi (July 16, 1904 – March 3, 2003) was an Italian composer of modern classical music. ...

(See also Electronic music, Absolute music, Italian opera) Electronic music is a term for music created using electronic devices. ... Absolute music is a term used within the classical music field to describe music that is not explicitly about anything. ... Italian opera can be divided into three periods, the Baroque, the Romantic and the modern. ...