Franois Couperin 16681733

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François Couperin 1668-1733
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Lart de toucherle clavecin
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Questions of ornamentation

• Is the ornament diatonic, or does it require an
  accidental?
• Does it precede the main note or fall on the
  beat?
• Is it fast or slow?
• If slow, what proportion of the main note does
  the ornament require?
• Does the stress lie more on the ornament or the
  main note?

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Antonio Vivaldi

• Venetian composer
• Holy Orders in his early twenties.

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Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

• il prete rosso - The Red Priest
• Girls orphanage in Venice
• Composer in one of four of the most important
  music schools of Italy (and Europe)

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Vivaldis Musical Style

• Vivaldi is credited for helping to free
  instrumental style from vocal style.
• Each piece is used as a teaching tool to create
  virtuosity in the players of the orphanage and
  music school.
• Vivaldi boasted that he could write a concerto
  faster than the copyist could copy it!

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Vivaldis Musical Style

• Rapid scale patterns
• Arpeggio the outlining of a chords root, third,
  fifth and octave.
• Change of register. High Low
• Tessitura range of an instrument
• Creating contrasting timbres by blending
  different instruments together. (sonority)

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The Four Seasons Spring

• La Primavera The Spring
• Programmatic Concerto
• Program Music Music that is inspired by prose,
  poetry, painting, or a scene or event in the mind
  of the composer.

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The Four Seasons Spring

• Program the actual thought, poetry, or prose.
• La Primavera describes with music a poem from The
  Contest Between Harmony and Inspiration
  attributed to the composer.

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Spring Concerto in E Major

• Allegro
• Springtime is upon us.
• The birds celebrate her return with festive song,
  and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the
  breezes.
• Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar,
  casting their dark mantle over heaven,
• Then they die away to silence, and the birds take
  up their charming songs once more.
• Largo
• On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches
  rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his
  faithful dog beside him.
• Allegro
• Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes,
  nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the
  brilliant canopy of spring.

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La Primavera First movement

• Joyful spring has arrived (the Spring theme
  Ritornello)
• The birds greet it with their cheerful song.
• And the brooks in the gentle breezes.
• Flow with a sweet murmur.
• The sky is covered with a black mantle, and
  thunder and lightening announces a storm
• When they fall silent, the birds take up again
  their melodious song.

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Vivaldis Concerto, Mvt 1

• Ritornello form

R1 S1 R2 S2 R3 S3 R4 S4
R5 S5 R6
Song of birds
Murmuring streams How is S2 NOT consistent w/
the form?
Song of birds
Thunder lightning
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Compositions

• Over 500 concertos
• 46 operas
• sinfonias
• 73 sonatas
• chamber music
• sacred music

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Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

• Foremost French musician of
• 18th century

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Rameau Music Theory
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Treatise on Harmony (1722)

• Coined the terms tonic, dominant and subdominant
• harmonic progression through falling 5th (or
  rising 4th)
• chords maintain their identity regardless of
  inversion (harmony is based on root progression,
  regardless of lowest note)

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Rameau Music Theory

• the chord is the primal element in music
• a chord maintains its identity in all inversions
  basse fondamentale or root progression
• Triadic relationships tonic, dominant, etc.
• Hierarchial function of triads
• Pivot chord modulation

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Rameau - theory II

• 3. Triadic relationships - tonic, domininant,
  etc.
• 4. Hierarchial function of triads
• 5. Pivot chord modulation

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Hippolyte et Aricie (1733)

• music almost programmatic (rough sea, high winds
• Ah! faut-il
• tragédie lyrique
• monologue

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Exposed to greatness

• Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la Poupliniere
  (a rich tax collector) became Rameaus patron
• Pouplinieres gatherings included Voltaire,
  Rousseau, and Casanova

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Rameau and Voltaire
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Lullistes versus Ramistes

• Rameau subverter of the good old French opera
  tradition of Lully
• more expressive, dramatic (due to more chromatic
  harmonies)
• innovative orchestration (more winds)
• increase in homophonic sections (Classical period
  is right around the corner)