Oct 28, 2020 · Discuss the development of opera during the Baroque era. It was said that to have a successful revolution there must be an evolution that contains both the old and new style of music. This statement was applied to the music during the Baroque era. In 1600, a new system of harmonic organization builds and minor and major scale patterns to the older church modes.
Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It started in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century (with Jacopo Peri’s lost Dafne , produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the seventeenth century.
Aug 20, 2011 · The shift in emphasis in Saariaho's music from texture and harmony towards a more melodic style coincided with her first opera, and that trend has continued in her subsequent stage works, all of ...
Classical opera was introduced by the Greek and Roman societies, and was related to their scientific and cultural practices of the time. During this time, there were no inventions in drama and music (Naxos). However, religion and tradition had great influence on music of the day since during occasions related to the two there were performances ...
It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer. The mid-to-late nineteenth century was a “golden age” of opera, led and dominated by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The twentieth century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television.
Also, opera was born out of the experimentation of the Florentine Camerata, the creators of monody, who attempted to recreate the theatrical arts of the Ancient Greeks. Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting.
He developed two styles of composition—the heritage of Renaissance polyphony and the new basso continuo technique of the baroque. Monteverdi wrote one of the earliest operas, L’Orfeo, a novel work that is the earliest surviving opera still regularly performed.
Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylized in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star.
Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa. Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an “opera-within-an-opera.”.
Introduction. Eighteenth-century “Rinaldo” theatre (opera) costume. Many musical forms were born in the baroque era, like the concerto and sinfonia. Forms such as the sonata, cantata and oratorio flourished. Also, opera was born out of the experimentation of the Florentine Camerata, the creators of monody, who attempted to recreate ...
In 1637 , the idea of a “season” (Carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when modernism began to undermine the basic grammar of music, some of the principles that underpinned the workings of opera inevitably came under attack, too. Though some composers continued to write operas in which the symbiotic relationship between the music, the words and the drama they conveyed was much the same as it had been for the previous 300 years, others took the opportunity to reconsider basic assumptions about dramatic structure, and the role of music within it.
Perhaps the most widely performed German opera composer since Henze, Glanert's do zen stage works to date show his ability to write music that is both dramatically effective and arrestingly immediate.
Having made his name internationally with Greek, an East-End updating of the Oedipus myth, each of Turnage's subsequent operas has explored utterly different territory, both dramatically and musically.
Stage works are an important strand in Rihm's prodigious output; some of them are relatively conventional, others starkly experimental, but all match drama to music in a powerfully individual way.
The shift in emphasis in Saariaho's music from texture and harmony towards a more melodic style coincided with her first opera, and that trend has continued in her subsequent stage works, all of which centre on a single female protagonist.
The music would still contain, support and reinforce the onstage drama, but that drama didn't need to be linear: scenes could proceed simultaneously (as in Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, 1965), present different versions of the same story (Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus), tell no story at all (Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach) or dispense with a text altogether (Wolfgang Rihm's Séraphin, 1995).
In the 1920s, Tin Pan Alley’s dominance of the popular music industry was threatened by two technological developments: the advent of electrical recording and the rapid growth of radio.
The first stirrings of popular or pop music—any genre of music that appeals to a wide audience or subculture—began in the late 19th century, with discoveries by Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner. In 1877, Edison discovered that sound could be reproduced using a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a rotating metal cylinder. Edison’s phonograph provided ideas and inspiration for Berliner’s gramophone, which used flat discs to record sound. The flat discs were cheaper and easier to produce than were the cylinders they replaced, enabling the mass production of sound recordings. This would have a huge impact on the popular music industry, enabling members of the middle class to purchase technology that was previously available only to an elite few. Berliner founded the Berliner Gramophone Company to manufacture his discs, and he encouraged popular operatic singers such as Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba to record their music using his system. Opera singers were the stars of the 19th century, and their music generated most of the sheet music sales in the United States. Although the gramophone was an exciting new development, it would take 20 years for disc recordings to rival sheet music in commercial importance (Shepherd, 2003).
The 1920s through the 1950s is considered the golden age of radio. During this time, the number of licensed radio stations in the United States exploded from five in 1921 to over 600 by 1925 (Salmon, 2010). The introduction of radio broadcasting provided a valuable link between urban city centers and small, rural towns. Able to transmit music nationwide, rural radio stations broadcasted local music genres that soon gained popularity across the country.
Although improvisation was allowed during solo performances, the format became more structured, resulting in the swing style of jazz that became popular in the 1930s. As the decade progressed, social attitudes toward racial segregation relaxed and big bands became more racially integrated.
The 1930s: The Rise of Jazz and Blues. The ascendance of Tin Pan Alley coincided with the emergence of jazz in New Orleans. An improvisational form of music that was primarily instrumental, jazz incorporated a variety of styles, including African rhythms, gospel, and blues.
This would have a huge impact on the popular music industry, enabling members of the middle class to purchase technology that was previously available only to an elite few.
The hip-hop genre first became popular among Black youths in the late 1970s, when record spinners in the Bronx and Harlem started to play short fragments of songs rather than the entire track (known as sampling) (Demers, 2003). Early hip-hop artists sampled all types of music, like funk, soul, and jazz, later adding special effects to the samples and experimenting with techniques such as rotating or scratching records back and forth to create a rhythmic pattern. For example, Kool Moe Dee’s track “How Ya Like Me Now” includes samples from James Brown’s classic funk song “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” The DJs would often add short raps to their music to let audiences know who was playing the records, a trend that grew more elaborate over time to include entire spoken verses. Artists such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five added political and social commentary on the realities of life in low-income, high-crime areas—a trend that would continue with later rappers such as Public Enemy and Ice-T.
Opera was invented in Florence, Italy, around 1600 by a group of intellectuals, poets, and musicians, also know as the Florentine Camerata. The oldest surviving opera, L’Euridice was composed by Giulio Caccini and Jacopo Peri, two of the leading members of the Florentine Camerata and was composed in 1600. “Le nuove musiche” (1602) is published by the Florentine Camerata composer, Giulio Caccini.
Moving on in the Baroque era, Claudio Monteverdi was often regarded as the first true composer of opera. Not only did he compose a great number of opera seria (tragic opera), he also increased the role of ensembles and established the love duet. He was also known as the most important composer of early Italian opera. In his famous opera, “The Coronation of Poppea”was first performed in 1642. By the time he composed “The Coronation of Poppea”, public houses had already been established in major Italian cities. His famous motto is “the text is the master, the music is the servant”.
Henry Purcell is sometimes referred to by “British Orpheus” because of his compelling lyricism in his compositions.His famous opera, “Dido and Aeneas” was originally written for a performance by the students of Josias Priest School for Girls in the London suburb of Chelsea.
Georges Bizet's verismo opera 'Carmen,' based on a French novella, is about a fiery young woman who seduces a soldier, ultimately leading to his demise. Explore a synopsis of the opera, meet its composer, and discover its music and reception. Updated: 10/14/2021
A habanera is a Cuban dance form with a characteristic and catchy rhythm. This rhythm dominates the bass line of the number. The melody opens with descending chromatic scale, which is a sequence of notes that uses every possible tone in the octave, as defined by the Western tuning system.
A famous bullfighter, Escamillo, arrives. He flirts with Carmen, who rebuffs him because she is waiting for José to be released from jail.
The men fight and are separated by Carmen's gang of smugglers. Because José has attacked a superior officer, he has no choice but to run away with Carmen and the smugglers to the mountains. In the mountains, Carmen bores of José and advises him to go home to his mother.
The Music. Bizet wrote over 1,200 pages of music, which he described as 'vivacious' and 'full of color.'. The score uses Spanish and Latin elements to create memorable melodies that have found their way into popular culture in commercials, TV shows, and movies, including Disney's Up.
Lesson Summary. Carmen was written by composer Georges Bizet, based on a book by Prosper Mérimée. The opera premiered in Paris, in 1875. The title character is a gypsy who entices the soldier José away from his girlfriend, only to leave him for the dashing bullfighter Escamillo. At the end of the opera, José kills Carmen in a jealous rage.
Bizet toned the opera down a bit, and rehearsals began a year late, in October of 1874. During practice, Bizet found that he had to make a few changes to the music to appease the musicians, opera directors, and singers. Because of all the alterations, opening night was pushed back until March 3, 1875. The Music.