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Alfonso Ferrabosco The Elder
Alfonso Ferrabosco (baptized 18 January 154312 August 1588) was an Italian composer. While mostly famous as the solitary Italian madrigalist working in England, and the one mainly responsible for the growth of the madrigal there, he also composed much sacred music. He also may have been a spy for Elizabeth I while he was in Italy. His son, Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger was also a composer. Biography He was the eldest son of Domenico Ferrabosco, and a member of an aristocratic Bolognese family which had many musicians among its members. Alfonso was born in Bologna.John V. Cockshoot and Christopher D.S. Field. "Ferrabosco." In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/09507pg2 (accessed October 21, 2009). Little is known about his early life, but he is known to have spent part of it in Rome and part in Lorraine in the service of Charles of Guise. In 1562, probably with his uncle, he came to England for the first ...
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Viol
The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic '' rebab'' and the medieval European vielle,Otterstedt, Annette. ''The Viol: History of an Instrument. ''Kassel: Barenreiter;-Verlag Karl Votterle GmbH & Co; 2002. but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian ''viole'' and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish ''vihu ...
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Chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses only seven different notes, rather than the twelve available on a standard piano keyboard. Music is chromatic when it uses more than just these seven notes. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism and modality (the major and minor, or "white key", scales). Chromatic elements are considered, "elaborations of or substitutions for diatonic scale members".Matthew Brown; Schenker, "The Diatonic and the Chromatic in Schenker's "Theory of Harmonic Relations", ''Journal of Music Theory'', Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring 1986), pp. 1–33, citation on p. 1. Development of chromaticism Chromaticism began to develop in the late Renaissance period, notably in the 1550s, often as part of '' musica reservata'', in the music of Cipriano de Rore, in Orlando Lasso's '' Proph ...
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Passamezzo
The passamezzo (plural: ''passamezzi'' or ''passamezzos'') is an Italian folk dance of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Many pieces named "passamezzo" follow one of two chord progressions that came to be named after the dance, passamezzo antico and passamezzo moderno. The chord progression would be repeated numerous times in succession while the dance was being performed. According to Renaissance practices, the passamezzo dance is often followed by other dances in a triple time, such as the saltarello, gagliarda or paduana. Name There are many variant spellings. In Italian or international usage, the name is also rendered as ''pass'e mez(z)o'', ''passo e mezzo'', and ''passomez(z)o''. In early English usage, the names frequently incorporated the word measure in a folk etymology, giving such renderings as ''passemeasure'', ''passingmeasure'', ''passy-measures'' or ''passemeasure(s) pavan'', particularly to designate the ''passamezzo antico'' progression. Passamezzi followin ...
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In Nomine
In Nomine is a title given to a large number of pieces of English polyphonic, predominantly instrumental music, first composed during the 16th century. History This "most conspicuous single form in the early development of English consort music" originated in the early 16th century from a six-voice mass composed before 1530 by John Taverner on the plainchant ''Gloria Tibi Trinitas''. In the '' Benedictus'' section of this mass, the Latin phrase "in nomine Domini" was sung in a reduced, four-part counterpoint, with the plainchant melody in the meane part. At an early point, this attractive passage became popular as a short instrumental piece, though there is no evidence that Taverner himself was responsible for any of these arrangements. Over the next 150 years, English composers worked this melody into "In Nomine" pieces of ever greater stylistic range. ''In Nomine''s are typically consort pieces for four or five instruments, especially consorts of viols. One instrument pla ...
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Galliard
The ''galliard'' (; french: gaillarde; it, gagliarda) was a form of Renaissance dance and music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance form The ''galliard'' is not an improvised dance, but rather, it consists of choreographed patterns of steps, which occupy one or more measures of music. In one measure, a galliard typically has five steps; in French such a basic step is called a ''cinq pas'' and in Italy, ''cinque passi''. This is sometimes written in English sources as ''sinkapace''. These steps are: right, left, right, left, cadence. The galliard is an athletic dance, characterised by leaps, jumps, hops and other similar figures. The main feature that defines a galliard step is a large jump, after which the dancer lands with one leg ahead of the other. This jump is called a ''cadence,'' and the final landing is called the ''posture.'' The cadence is typically preceded by ...
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Pavane
The ''pavane'' ( ; it, pavana, ''padovana''; german: Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance). The pavane, the earliest-known music for which was published in Venice by Ottaviano Petrucci, in Joan Ambrosio Dalza's ''Intabolatura de lauto libro quarto'' in 1508, is a sedate and dignified couple dance, similar to the 15th-century basse danse. The music which accompanied it appears originally to have been fast or moderately fast but, like many other dances, became slower over time . Origin of term The word ''pavane'' is most probably derived from Italian 'danza''''padovana'' , , meaning "ancetypical of Padua" (similar to Bergamask, "dance from Bergamo"); ''pavan'' is an old Northern Italian form for the modern Italian adjective ''padovano'' (= from Padua). This origin is consistent with the equivalent form, ''Paduana''. An alternative explanation is that it derives from the Spanish ''pavón'' meaning ''peacock'' . Alth ...
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Fantasia (music)
A fantasia (; also English: ''fantasy'', ''fancy'', ''fantazy'', ''phantasy'', german: Fantasie, ''Phantasie'', french: fantaisie) is a musical composition with roots in improvisation. The fantasia, like the impromptu, seldom follows the textbook rules of any strict musical form. History The term was first applied to music during the 16th century, at first to refer to the imaginative musical "idea" rather than to a particular compositional genre. Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milán. Its form and style consequently ranges from the freely improvisatory to the strictly contrapuntal, and also encompasses more or less standard sectional forms. One of the most important composer ...
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A Cappella
''A cappella'' (, also , ; ) music is a performance by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato musical styles. In the 19th century, a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony, coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists, led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. The term is also used, rarely, as a synonym for '' alla breve''. Early history A cappella could be as old as humanity itself. Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been what early humans used to communicate before the invention of language. The earliest piece of sheet music is thought to have originated from times as early as 2000 B.C. while the earliest that has survived in its entirety is from the first century A.D.: a piece from Greece called the ...
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Anthem
An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the national anthems of countries. Originally, and in music theory and religious contexts, it also refers more particularly to short sacred choral work (still frequently seen in Sacred Harp and other types of shape note singing) and still more particularly to a specific form of liturgical music. In this sense, its use began ca. 1550 in English-speaking churches; it uses English language words, in contrast to the originally Roman Catholic 'motet' which sets a Latin text. Etymology ''Anthem'' is derived from the Greek (''antíphōna'') via Old English . Both words originally referred to antiphons, a call-and-response style of singing. The adjectival form is "anthemic". History Anthems were originally a form of liturgical music. In the Church of England, the rubric appoints them to follow the third collect at morning and evening prayer. Several anthems are inclu ...
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Lamentations (music)
''The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet'' have been set by various composers. Renaissance England Thomas Tallis set the first lesson, and second lesson, of Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday between 1560, and 1569: "when the practice of making musical settings of the Holy Week readings from the Book of Jeremiah enjoyed a brief and distinguished flowering in England (the practice had developed on the continent during the early 15th century)". The lessons are drawn from ''Lamentations'' (Lam. 1, vv.1-2, and Lam. 1, vv.3-5). These famous and notably expressive settings are both ''a'' 5 for ATTBB and employ a sophisticatedly imitative texture. Tallis like many other composers included the following text: * the announcements ''Incipit Lamentatio Ieremiae Prophetae'' ("Here begins the Lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet"), and ''De Lamentatione Ieremiae Prophetae'' ("From the Lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet"); * the Hebrew letters ALEPH, BETH, GIMEL, DALETH, and HE, that headed each ...
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Motet
In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond.Margaret Bent,The Late-Medieval Motet in ''Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music'', edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows, 114–19 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992): 114. . The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts". Etymology In the early 20th century, it was generally believed the ...
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Dow Partbooks
The Dow Partbooks (Christ Church, Mus. MSS 984–988) are a collection of five partbooks compiled by Robert Dow in Oxford around 1581–88. The collection includes mostly choral but also some instrumental pieces. At the end is an instrumental ''La gamba'' and a canon, both a 3 and apparently copied from Vincenzo Ruffo's book printed in Milan in 1564. The partbooks are an important source for Tudor music, and the sole known source for some of the pieces. Robert Dow was a trained calligrapher and the books are unusually easy to read among manuscripts of the Tudor period. All works were copied by him, with the exception of numbers 53–4, which were copied by John Baldwin (a singing-man at St George's Chapel), and nos. 99–100, which were copied by an unidentified person. The numberings following no. 54 were added by several other people at a later time (19th century), in sequences that do not coincide perfectly. The collection was acquired by Henry Aldrich and donated to Christ ...
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