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Motets By Johann Sebastian Bach
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 nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Geist Hilft Unser Schwachheit Auf
' (The Spirit gives aid to our weakness), 226, is a motet by Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in Leipzig in 1729 for the funeral of Johann Heinrich Ernesti. History For ' , the autograph score survives. Bach himself noted on its title: "." (' – Motet for two choirs for the funeral for the blessed Rector, Professor Ernesti, by J. S. Bach). Ernesti was professor of poetry at Leipzig University and director of the Thomasschule. The first performance took place in the Paulinerkirche, the university church). Scholars debate if the performance was 24 October, or rather 21 October, as indicated by the title page of the sermon. Bach wrote a number of works for occasions of Leipzig University. Twelve such works survive: they are mainly festive in character (in German they have been categorised as ''Festmusiken zu Leipziger Universitätsfeiern''). As well as being part of a series of works connected with the university, ''Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf'' as a funeral motet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Tyrrell (musicologist)
John Tyrrell (17 August 1942 – 4 October 2018) was a British musicologist. He published several books on Leoš Janáček, including an authoritative and largely definitive two-volume biography. Early life Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), he studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. He pursued his Bachelor of Music at the University of Cape Town following which he moved to Oxford University to pursue a doctoral degree under the supervision of Edmund Rubbra Career Tyrrell started his career working in an editorial capacity at The Musical Times. He was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor of the second edition of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (2001). From 2000-08, he was Research Professor at Cardiff University. He received numerous awards and honours throughout his career. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dunstaple
John Dunstaple (or Dunstable, – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the Medieval music, medieval to the Renaissance music, Renaissance periods. The central proponent of the ''Contenance angloise'' style (), Dunstaple was the leading English composer of his time, and is often coupled with William Byrd and Henry Purcell as England's most important early music composers. His surviving music is exclusively vocal, and frequently uses isorhythms, while pioneering the prominent use of harmonies with thirds and sixths. His style would have an immense influence on the subsequent music of continental Europe, inspiring composers such as Guillaume Du Fay, Du Fay, Gilles Binchois, Binchois, Johannes Ockeghem, Ockeghem and Antoine Busnois, Busnois. Information on Dunstaple's life is largely non-existent or speculative, with the only certain date of his activity being his death on Christmas Eve of 1453. Probably born in Dunstable, Bedf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume Du Fay
Guillaume Du Fay ( , ; also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a French composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced. Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself. While he is among the best-documented composers of his time, Du Fay's birth and family is shrouded with uncertainty, though he was probably the illegitimate child of a priest. He was educated at Cambrai Cathedral, where his teachers included Nicolas Grenon and Richard Loqueville, among others. For the next decade, Du Fay worked throughout Europe: as a subdeacon in Cambrai, under Carlo I Malatesta in Rimini, for the House of Malatesta in Pesaro, and under Louis Aleman in Bologna, where he was ordained priest. As his fame began to spread, he settled in Rome i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johannes Ciconia
Johannes Ciconia ( – between 10 June and 13 July 1412) was an important Flemish composer and music theorist of trecento music during the late Medieval era. He was born in Liège, but worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the papal chapels in Rome and later and most importantly at Padua Cathedral. Life He was the son of a priest (also named Johannes Ciconia) and a woman of high social standing. Since at least three other men around Liège had that name as well, this has created biographical confusion, first solved by David Fallows in 1975. A Johannes Ciconia, probably the composer's father, worked in Avignon in 1350 as a clerk for the wife of Pope Clement VI's nephew. Another Johannes Ciconia is recorded in Liège in 1385 as a , generally identifying a person of young age; scholars agree that this is the composer himself. Papal records suggest that Ciconia was in the service of Pope Boniface IX in Rome in 1391. His whereabouts between the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam De La Halle
Adam de la Halle (1245–50 – 1285–8/after 1306) was a French poet-composer ''trouvère''. Among the few medieval composers to write both monophonic and polyphonic music, in this respect he has been considered both a conservative and progressive composer, resulting in a complex legacy: he cultivated admired representatives of older trouvère genres, but also experimented with newer dramatic works. Adam represented the final generation of the ''trouvère'' tradition and "has long been regarded as one of the most important musical and literary figures of thirteenth-century Europe". Adam's literary and musical works include chansons and jeux-partis (poetic debates) in the style of the ''trouvères''; polyphonic rondel and motets in the style of early liturgical polyphony; and a musical play, '' Jeu de Robin et Marion'' (), which is considered the earliest surviving secular French play with music. He was a member of the Confrérie des jongleurs et bourgeois d'Arras, a frat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume De Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut (, ; also Machau and Machault; – April 1377) was a French composer and poet who was the central figure of the style in late medieval music. His dominance of the genre is such that modern musicologists use his death to separate the from the subsequent movement. Regarded as the most significant French composer and poet of the 14th century, he is often seen as the century's leading European composer. One of the earliest European composers on whom considerable biographical information is available, Machaut has an unprecedented amount of surviving music, in part due to his own involvement in his manuscripts' creation and preservation. Machaut embodies the culmination of the poet-composer tradition stretching back to the traditions of troubadour and ''trouvère''; well into the 15th century his poetry was greatly admired and imitated by other poets, including Geoffrey Chaucer and Eustache Deschamps, the latter of whom was Machaut's student. Machaut compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippe De Vitry
Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and music theorist in the style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a leading musician of his day, with Petrarch writing a glowing tribute, calling him: "... the keenest and most ardent seeker of truth, so great a philosopher of our age." The important music treatise ''Ars nova notandi'' (1322) is usually attributed to Vitry. It is thought that very little of Vitry's compositions survive; though he wrote secular music, only his sacred works are extant. Life and career Details of his early life are vague. While some medieval sources claim that he was born in the Champagne region, more recent research indicates that he may have originated in Vitry-en-Artois near Arras.Anne Walters Robertson, "Which Vitry? The Witness of the Trinity Motet from the ''Roman de Fauvel''" in ''Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isorhythm
Isorhythm (from the Greek for "the same rhythm") is a musical technique using a repeating rhythmic pattern, called a ''talea'', in at least one voice part throughout a composition. ''Taleae'' are typically applied to one or more melodic patterns of pitches or ''colores'', which may be of the same or a different length from the ''talea''. History and development Isorhythms first appear in French motets of the 13th century, such as in the Montpellier Codex. Although 14th-century theorists used the words ''talea'' and ''color''—the latter in a variety of senses related to repetition and embellishment—the term "isorhythm" was not coined until 1904 by musicologist Friedrich Ludwig (1872–1930), initially to describe the practice in 13th-century polyphony. Ludwig later extended its use to the 14th-century music of Guillaume de Machaut. Subsequently, Heinrich Besseler and other musicologists expanded its scope further as an organizing structural element in 14th- and early 15th-cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montpellier Codex
The ''Montpellier Codex'' (''Montpellier, Bibliothèque Inter-Universitaire, Section Médecine, H196'') is an important source of 13th-century France, French polyphony. The ''Codex'' contains 336 polyphonic works probably composed c. 1250–1300, and was likely compiled c. 1300. It is believed to originate from Paris. It was discovered by musicologist Edmond de Coussemaker in c. 1852. Format and contents The ''Montpellier Codex'' can be roughly divided into 8 fascicle (book), fascicles, each of which contain discrete musical genre, genres of music. The format of the ''Codex ''is as follows: * 1. Liturgy, Liturgical polyphony (ff. 1r-22r) * 2. French triple motets, consisting of a ''cantus firmus'' with three counterpoint, contrapuntal lines above it (ff. 23v-61r) * 3. Macaronic language, Macaronic double motets, consisting of a ''cantus firmus'' with two contrapuntal lines above it (ff. 63v-86v) * 4. Latin double motets (ff. 87v-111r) * 5. French double motets (ff. 111v-227r) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregorian Chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song in Latin (and occasionally Greek) of the Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope Gregory I with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of the Old Roman chant and Gallican chant. Gregorian chants were organized initially into four, then eight, and finally 12 modes. Typical melodic features include a characteristic ambitus, and also characteristic intervallic patterns relative to a referential mode final, incipits and cadences, the use of reciting tones at a particular distance from the final, around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called centonization to create families of related ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melisma
Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as ''melismatic'', as opposed to ''syllabic'', in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run. The term roulade is also sometimes used interchangeably with melisma. History General The term melisma may be used to describe music of any genre, including baroque singing, opera, and later gospel. Within the tradition of Religious Jewish music, melisma is still commonly used in the chanting of Torah, readings from the Prophets, and in the body of a service. Today, melisma is commonly used in Middle Eastern, African, and African American music, Irish sean nós singing, and flamenco. Melisma is also commonly featured in Western popular music. Prevalence in western popular music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
