Claudio Monteverdi : Madrigals And Church Music

Reality comes from creating an imagined thought - whether that thought stemmed from something that someone has seen to what someone has heard, or even felt. The composer that will be discussed throughout this essay composed Morir non può il mio cuore in 1566, this composer is none other but Maddalena Casulana. During the years in which Casulana composed music, she was always looking to present her dedications of her madrigal volumes in a way to provide a little more biographical information than most would at the time. Throughout 1560-1569, she began to publish what would ultimately become her three-volume collection of madrigals (1568; 1570; 1583) that were published the year of her death and which were the first three books of madrigals by a women composer to ever be printed (Franck, Brownstone, 1995. Page 46, 48). Casulana presented her music in a very dramatic way, she was different and unique, focusing and attracted to the topics of ones passing and perpetual dying (Sadie, 1980. Page 2). She was an Italian composer and singer who told a story through the pieces she had composed; expressing each piece in a distinct and narrative way. Maddalena Casulana contributed a great deal of music that till this day will be remembered and cherished.

Giovanni Gabrieli was a legendary composer of the 16th century. As the fundamental structure and ideas of the Catholic Church were being challenged by the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, Gabrieli’s compositions were given the opportunity to be successful and influential to music in the coming centuries. His works helped to transform not only church music of the Catholic Church, but also secular music as well. Giovanni Gabrieli wrote significant works that ultimately shaped the rise of the symphony, including the development of purely instrumental works, the art of orchestration, and the concerto style. Without his innovations in composition, it is arguable that instrumental music would not have developed as quickly, or developed

“My composer is Guillaume De Machaut. People believe that he was born around the year 1300 but yet they don’t know what day he was born on. He died on April 13, 1377. He was both born and died in Reims, France. Very little is know for Guillaume but he was employed by John of Luxembourg, who was the king of Bohemia. He was named canon (a canon is someone that can play two or more instruments of something) of Verdun in 1330, Arras in 1332, and Reims in 1337. We don’t know too much about him because he was in the 1300’s where no one wrote any information about Guillaume De Machaut.

One of the greatest composers of music, even though it was only slightly notated at the time, was Guillaume de Machaut (d. 1377), “one of the undisputed pinnacle geniuses of Western music…” His most famous piece was the four-voice Mass of Notre Dame, which maintained his reputation through the changes in fashion (Roberge). After almost a millennium’s worth of music was composed and contributed, the style of music began to change with the next era.

Marcia was looking for Domitilla. She finds the Domitilla and informs her that the mistress had invited a relative to the house and she had to go prepare

“The Saliere of 1781 is an honored and prolific composer in the court of Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, who he has dedicated his life and his talents to the greater honor and glory of God and has obtained fame. Salieri belongs to a clique of Italians who have culturally

Two weeks after arriving in Florence, while walking home from dinner across the river, stumbled upon Piazza della Signoria, for the first time. With the sound of a street performer’s violin in the crisp night air, I sat on the edge of the open-air gallery of statues. I still do not know why the piazza affected me the way it did, but with tears in my eyes, I knew I had found a place in Florence where I could be bitter sweetly happy.

setting was social gatherings for the upper middle class and nobility where the guests performed

Around 1530, Philippe Verdelot and Jacques Arcadelt form what is today France or southern Belgium, were the leading composers in madrigal music. Another famous composer of the poems of the madrigal was Pietro Bembo as well as an Italian poet, Francesco Petrarcho. Cipriano de Rore was a composer that introduced chromatic and dissonant feel to the madrigal. Additionally, there was a well-known woman published composer, which was rare, of the madrigal, Maddelena Casulana. The madrigal was the opportunity for composers as well as musicians to come out and share their emotion secular

Moreover, the neoclassic usage in this work is striking. For instance, in the last stanza by employing the word nymph this is a direct reference to the mentioning of Daphne and a Delphic god in the previous stanza; a mythical tale in

Monteverdi, like other Baroque composers, frequently used word painting. The opening words, "You are dead," repeated and culminating in "You have left me forevermore, never to return, and I remain," are song in a "stretched out," "long and slow" fashion, but as the verse continues, intensity and volume is increased to result in basically an outburst by the words, "ed io rimango," or "and I remain." The free beat and meter of the vocals allows for the singer to illustrate the emotion of the text through the speed in which the words are sung and the intensity of each word. More "traditional" word painting is used in the sense that there is a low tone on "abissi" or "abysses" in order to depict the deepness and descending nature of the underworld. Another strategic low note is placed on "morte" to symbolize death and depression. Very high tones are used on the words "stelle" and "sole"

Giovanni Gabrieli was an Italian composer born in 1554 and wrote many works in the ‘in between’ stage of Renaissance and Baroque. He was a composer and

Like the previous eras, Opera continued to be one of the most important music genre is the 19th century, especially in Italy, German and France. Opera served as a form of entertainment for the people of higher social class. Opera music was also popular among the people of other social classes due to the availability of transcribed opera music for them to enjoy in salons or homes of the middle class. This genre was extensively explored and developed by the Italians and Germans. This paper will discuss how Italian and German opera were developed by comparing each composer’s distinctive compositional traits.

Born in Venice in 1678, Antonio Vivaldi became a Catholic priest and a virtuoso violinist and was known as the most influential Italian composer of his time. He was a prolific composer who wrote more than 500 concertos, 230 of them for violin and the others for instruments ranging from cello, bassoon, oboe and flute to viola d 'amore, recorder, and lute. He also wrote 46 operas and sacred choral music, as well as 90 sonatas and numerous chamber music works. Due to his use of programmatic material in some of his musical works, such as Four Seasons, he is seen today as a pioneer in the development of programmatic music.

Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678 in the town of Venice, Italy. His father was quite the musician and helped his son master the violin and also helped him get find lessons from some the best composers in Italy. Sadly, do to his symptoms that were similar to asthma often causing him to have severe shortness of breath he was unable to master several instruments. At one point in his early life he even became a priest but this was short lived do to his continuing health issues therefore he had to give up his priesthood. “At the age of 25, Antonio Vivaldi was named master of violin at the Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice” (). This is where he spent in upwards of thirty years teaching his students and only having