Corelli - Concerto grosso in g minor, Op. 6, No. 8

Concerto grosso in g minor, Op. 6, No. 8
Composer: Arcangelo Corelli
Score (opens to a PDF)

HERE is the link to our full playlist.


HERE is the link to our full playlist.

This is a really fantastic demonstration of how Corelli took the compositional techniques from his chamber and church sonatas and applied them to larger-scale works. You have here just the first movement, but all six are on the playlist.

This was published after Corelli's death but was likely composed in 1690. It is commonly known as the "Christmas Concerto," since Corelli composed it to be played on Christmas night. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't listen to the whole thing. You can hear some of what would influence Vivaldi - and therefore eventually Bach - in the writing. The contrast between the concertino (the group of soloists in a concerto grosso) and the ripieno (the larger instrumental group) in particular are very standard of Baroque concerto grosso style.

Corelli - Trio Sonata op. 3, no. 2

Trio Sonata Op. 3, No. 2
Composer: Arcangelo Corelli

HERE is the link to our full playlist.


HERE is the link to our full playlist.

If my old music history professor got wind of the fact that I was giving you a trombone quartet version of a Corelli sonata, she'd hate it. A lot of people take very strong views on performing these pieces with the correct instruments, but this is just an absolutely lovely version of an already gorgeous sonata. Notice what the transcription means for the continuo though: no chords! It's an entirely different sound.

Now, I don't know if this version is any better, it's just sort of fun. There's something to be said for this sonata played on period violins. The astringency of their timbre really accentuates the suspensions and makes the resolutions that much sweeter.

I'll have a more serious piece up in a bit, but what's the point of doing this if it isn't fun?

MUSC 320 - Purcell, "Come, let us drink," "Fie, nay, prithee John"

"Come, let us drink"
Composer: Henry Purcell (1659–1695)


"Fie, nay, prithee John" (also known as the Chiding Catch)
Composer: Henry Purcell (1659–1695)


These are both examples of British catches, the style of music that's pretty much like a round. It was hugely popular in 17th-century England, and Henry Purcell (of Dido and Aeneas fame) composed a ton of them. These are two of my favorites. What you get in these two pieces is a perfect example of the spirit of the catch, often a very bawdy type of music. For example, the lyrics of the second are:

Fie, nay, prithee John,
Do not quarrel, man!
Let's be merry and drink about;

[here, the character switches]
You're a rogue, you cheated me!
I'll prove before this company,
I caren't a farthing, sir, for all
you are so stout.

[back to the first]
Sir, you lie! I scorn your word
Or any man who wears a sword!
For all your huff who cares a damn,
And who cares for you?

You can practically hear the drunken people in an English pub yelling "Ohhhhh snap!" This music is delightful.

It's been added to the 320 playlist, too, which you can find here.

MUSC 320 - Schütz, "Johannes-Passion"

Johannes-Passion, SWV 481
Composer: Heinrich Schütz
Score



We're almost caught up with the course now. Plus, there will be a ton of music once we hit Bach and Handel. In the meantime here is that Passion by Heinrich Schütz that I mentioned two Fridays ago. You'll notice is a lot different from the Bach Passions, since it is a capella and includes plainchant for the Evangelist.

If you're having trouble subscribing to the playlist, here is a direct link to it (clicking this will open a tab in your browser which will ask you to open Spotify and bring you to the playlist).

MUSC 320 Playlist - "Possenti spirto"

"Possenti spirto" from L'Orfeo
Composer: Claudio Monteverdi
Librettist: Alessandro Striggio
Score (Takes you to IMSLP page, not PDF... they unfortunately only have the score for the full opera)


Here's the first piece on the MUSC 320 playlist for you all to enjoy. I know that we talked about L'Orfeo in class, but we sure missed a ton of good music. I'd highly recommend clicking on this album in Spotify and listening to the entire thing. This recording features Nigel Rogers as Orpheus, and you hear him here singing "Possenti spirto" (also sometimes spelled "Possente spirto"). In this scene, Orpheus is begging Charon, boatman of the River Styx in the underworld, to let him cross the river. It's a moment of heightened emotion, and one of the most beautiful arias that Monteverdi ever wrote. The interplay between the voice and the instrumental duets is especially fun.

Be sure to open the list in Spotify and subscribe to it, as that's where I'll be adding everything in the future. For the next few posts, I'll keep posting the whole playlist, but eventually that will get cumbersome and I'll just post individual pieces. If you go to the playlist, though, you'll find them all there.

MUSC 310 Playlist

Before we get to the extra music for this semester, I thought I'd put up the playlist that I had going for last semester's music:


Open this in actual Spotify for better navigation, but here's a quick run-down of what you've got (note: it is in roughly chronological order):

• Music of Leonin/Perotin. The very first song on the list (Beata viscera) is one that many of you loved when I played it before class last semester. Throw on a pair of good headphones and it's even better, as you can tell that they recorded in in a church while it was raining outside. 
• Guillaume de Mauchaut: La messe de nostre dame. This is the complete thing, rather than just the movement from NAWM. It also has appropriate settings of the proper (since, as you'll recall, the mass is actually just an Ordinary cycle). That means this is pretty close to what you might have actually heard sung in a church in 1364.
• John Dunstable motets. Of these, Veni sancte spiritus... is a particular favorite of mine. 
• Guillaume Du Fay, Missa Se la face ay pale. This, unlike the Mauchaut, is just the ordinary parts of the mass. If you click on the full album, they've done the propers as well, but I just put the ordinary parts in here because 1) they're jaw-droppingly gorgeous and 2) they have the same cantus firmus running throughout and you can hear how the individual movements are connected. The "Agnus Dei" in particular is amazing. The huge cadence at about 41 seconds in (in which a giant suspension gets resolved) never fails to give me goosebumps. Listen to this as loudly as you can handle. Hauntingly pretty.
• A whole bunch of masses by Johannes/Jean de Ockeghem. You already know the Missa prolationum, but the Missa pro defunctis should be of some note. It's the first surviving polyphonic setting of the entire requiem mass. This is the work that eventually leads us to the Mozart Requiem and (obviously much more importantly) Britten's War Requiem. I also really love the Missa "Mi-Mi." I don't have much to say about it, but it is lovely. Ockeghem is pretty underrated. 
• Josquin de Prez' Missa de beata virgine. A warning, whoever mastered this recording did a great job, but they left about 7 or 8 seconds of silence at the beginning of the Kyrie, so don't freak out, it will start playing. It's here just so you can hear another Josquin mass. And the second is his Missa Ave maris stella (preceded by the plainchant antiphon of the same name). I threw this in here because I think one or two of you did it for your papers last semester. (Jess, was that you?)
• Thomas Tallis' mass for four voices. I can't do this without giving you a lot of British music, okay? I just have a weakness. Notice, despite the awkward labeling of Spotify, that the Mass for Four Voices is Tallis and the Mass A 4/5 is Byrd. They're from the same album. 
• William Byrd's Masses for four and five voices. Written during a time of some pretty serious changes in the English church (remember the shift to Anglicanism and then the turmoil that followed?), these are my favorite of his little nameless masses. Starting to notice a trend? I'm just giving you music that I really like. 
• Alright, this is one of my favorite pieces of all time. William Byrd's motet Ave verum corpus. I'm not sure what to say about it, really. I got to sing it a few years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. So yeah. Here's a score (PDF if you click on the link) if you want to sing along too. You can actually find most of this stuff on IMSLP if you look. 
• Alessandro Striggio's Mass in 40 parts. (Note, this is the father of the Alessandro Striggio who wrote the libretto to L'Orfeo). This is just... holy cow. Some absolutely incredible writing here, with 40 separate polyphonic parts. And at the final Agnus Dei? He says "eff it" and makes it 60 parts. We've known about this for years, but it's only recently (2007 or so) been fully recovered. Pretty awesome stuff. 
• Tomas Luis De Victoria's Missa O magnum mysterium. This is here because I'm obsessed with the original motet on which this is based. No, really. Check this out. An entire playlist of different settings of that same text.
• Finally, a bunch of madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo. They're just a ton of fun, and boy what cool harmonic stuff. I think the jazz players among you will really love these.

Anyhow, you should never see a post this long again. From now on I'll add to a new playlist (to be revealed soon!) that's MUSC 320. And since that'll be over the course of the semester you should just see a paragraph or two at a time.