If you hear a cello playing all by itself it can only be the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major. Once again, instrumentation will be the giveaway for this piece. Only one piece on this exam features the cello as the solo instrument so this should be a fairly easy piece to recognize. That said, I hope you will pay attention to the fact that this piece consists primarily of arpeggios—notes of a chord played in succession, one after the other, instead of all at once. Preludes were often written as a kind of warmup for more challenging pieces to follow. Often you’ll find composers pairing a prelude with a fugue, the prelude serving to help prepare the performer’s fingers and the audience’s ears for the more complex and challenging fugue to come. In this case the prelude paves the way for the subsequent dance movements of the suite. It is a testament to Bach’s talent that an introductory piece sounds so beautiful all by itself.
There is only one piece on your exam for full orchestra without any soloist or concertino: “Alla Hornpipe” from Handel’s Water Music. Remember what Handel was writing his Water Music for. It is a series of suites to be played in the presence of the King of England while on a royal barge trip (a parade really) on the River Thames. By the way, I know when I say barge you think of a big flat thing hauling coal or logs on the Mississippi, but these were really fancy boats. Anyway, this music was for an outdoor performance on a busy commercial waterway with only as many musicians as you could fit on the barge (not many). So it’s no surprise that Handel gave some really prominent passages to the loudest instruments: the horns, trumpets, and drums. If you hear a big orchestral sound with standout moments for the brass, you’re hearing Water Music. I should mention that in this movement you have an ABA form, with the prominent use of brass instruments found only in the A section. The B section is comparatively shorter, features active lines for the strings and woodwinds without brass or percussion, and is in a minor key to contrast the major key of the A section. As with other pieces that features a similar ternary form, I feel it would be misleading if your listening excerpt was taken solely from the B section. On the listening exam, if you hear a portion of this piece it will either come from the A section alone or will have both B and A sections represented.
There are two pieces that feature a singer with sparse accompaniment: “Tu se’ morta” and “Possente spirto” from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. The two vocal movements from L’Orfeo can be distinguished from each other by the fact that one movement is an arioso (“Tu se’ morta”) while the other is an aria (“Possente spirto”). You might be surprised an aria falls under the category “I hear one singer with continuo,” but in the early days of the Baroque, the concept of an orchestra was quite different from the large ensemble that we think of. Even the orchestras of Bach and Handel in the late Baroque, though small by modern standards, were much larger than those used in the earliest operas. The orchestra in L’Orfeo is composed of less than a dozen instruments and it punctuates the singer’s melody rather than accompanies it.
Arias’ main purpose is to express emotion, and the emotions of these to arias make them easy to distinguish. “Rejoice Greatly” expresses joy and happiness (at least during the first and last sections of the da capo aria) while “When I am laid in earth” expresses sorrow. Both arias are in English so the emotion being expressed in each piece will be easier to pick up on as you can rely on the words as well as the character of the music. That may be enough to tell these two apart, but in addition you can listen for the bass line. In “When I am laid in earth” there is a ground bass. As a result the bass line is a short, descending melodic idea that repeats over and over without change for the entire aria. “He shall feed His flock” does not have this feature, so the bass line will also help you tell these two similar pieces apart.
Correlli’s Sonata in B flat Major, Opus 5 No. 2: II Allegro is our only piece of chamber music on the exam. The solo violin should really stand out. Don’t get this confused with the solo violin concerto by Vivaldi. That piece features the contrast between a full orchestra and a solo violin. This is a sonata in which the only thing playing along with the violin is the continuo. And in this particular performance, the continuo is played by harpsichord alone rather than the usual cello/harpsichord pair. Remember that sonatas are a form of chamber music. Chamber music is intended for performance in a smaller space for smaller audiences. It is easy to imagine a group of aristocrats gathered in an elegantly appointed room in a palace listening to the performance of the violinist. A concerto features a much larger ensemble and would need to be performed in a larger space such as a concert hall.
This has to be the 1st movement of Vivaldi’s “Spring” from The Four Seasons. This work is a solo concerto and as such features a contrast between a full orchestra and a soloist. They also are designed to show of the virtuosity of the soloist so you can expect to hear some really flashy playing from the soloist. Vivaldi doesn’t disappoint in that regard. He was a virtuoso violinist as well as a composer so he was writing music that would show off his abilities as a performer. If you hear orchestral music with virtuosic solo violin passages, it has to be Spring.
This has to be Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, 1st movement. This piece is a concerto grosso. Like a solo concerto it is based on the principle of contrasting groups of instruments. Instead of the orchestra vs. soloist contrast that you expect from a solo concerto, however, you have orchestra vs. concertino. The concertino could be made up of any instruments, generally 2 to 4, drawn from the larger orchestra. In the first movement of this piece you have a concertino of flute, violin, and harpsichord. Sometimes all the instruments of the concertino play together and at other times they alternate. This makes the concerto grosso a bit more flexible in its sound. One unusual characteristic of this particular piece is Bach’s emphasis on the harpsichord. Normally the harpsichord is in the background but Bach puts it center stage with some extremely virtuosic passages for the keyboard. In fact there are times when the harpsichord plays all by itself in this piece, almost as though it were a solo harpsichord concerto. Listen for the small group/large group contrast and the fiery harpsichord playing.