Transcription
Hi there. Okay, so uh, last time we talked about the basic characteristics of music in the Baroque era, and now we're going to talk about specific genres of music—that is, types of pieces—and they're going to be quite a lot of them, more than we had in the Renaissance. Partly because there's just so much more instrumental music now, and there are different types of pieces for instruments—often certain types for solo instruments versus small groups of instruments playing together, what we call chamber music, or large groups, what we call orchestral music.
So what I've done is, before we get into this too much, I'm just going to sort of give you one of my handy-dandy high-tech visual aids, which has all of the different genres that we will talk about in one place. And you might want to freeze the screen here for a second, um, and and just write this down for yourself, and and leave enough space maybe to fill in a brief definition so that as we go through these over the next several lectures, you'll have a sort of one-stop shopping for basic information. Now obviously, there's there's more information about each one of these than we could possibly fill in that little space, but maybe just the basic definition.
So notice how I'm dividing it up by vocal versus instrumental music, and also notice how I've written up here: vocal music in the Baroque era generally is not a cappella; it's voices with instruments. So each of these three different genres—opera, oratorio, and cantata—all involve instruments along with voices; it's not purely vocal music. Over here on the instrumental side, all this is purely instrumental music, and notice I've got it sub-categorized into genres which tend to be for solo instruments. Now that might mean really solo, all by yourself, or it might mean solo with keyboard accompaniment. So, for example, a violin sonata or a flute sonata during the Baroque era might be accompanied—still considered a solo piece—but for, let's say, flute and keyboard or violin and keyboard; or it could be unaccompanied, especially for example for the stringed instruments. So you have unaccompanied uh violin sonatas that are really for a solo violin and nothing else. Then there's some other types in there: the suite, the toccata, the fugue, which I've got a little bit of an asterisk next to, and we'll talk about that when we get to talking about the fugue, probably a couple lectures from now. Fugue isn't necessarily for a solo instrument, but it turns out that most fugues were composed for keyboard—for solo keyboard. Doesn't have to be, but it just kind of turned out that way that usually when we think of a fugue, it's um, during the Baroque era, it's probably for a solo keyboard. Uh, and then the prelude, which is another type of piece I'll talk about later. For small group, we have something called the trio sonata or the chamber suite, and for large group we have two different types of concerto: the concerto grosso and the solo concerto, and I'll talk about the difference between the two when we get there. And then down here, the orchestral suite. Notice the suite is a type of piece that could be played by a solo instrument, or a small group, a chambered group, or by an entire orchestra. So I'll keep referring back and sort of plugging in the specific info for each of these genres as we get to those lectures.
So the next however many lectures there's going to be uh in this unit are are going to be about different types of pieces, the characteristics of those pieces, and then also along the way we will talk about our six major composers. Now obviously there are far more than six, but we are only going to have the the time to deal with six composers, and we're going to go chronologically. So the first composer that we're going to talk about is Claudio Monteverdi. He was definitely the most important composer of the early Baroque era and considered to be the first great opera composer. Didn't invent opera single-handedly, but he's considered the first great master of opera. All right. Now where I'm working from in the book, I left off last time, page 107. And uh, the next couple of pages in the ninth brief edition—page 108, page 109, and about halfway down page 110—are all about music in Baroque society. I've already talked about this a little bit just in the sort of general historical background information uh in the first first lecture on the Baroque. I'm not going to get too much more into this; this is stuff that you can read and understand on your own because it doesn't really contain any technical musical terms or characteristics of music; it's just talking about the role of music in society, how musicians got their jobs, what kind of positions they had. [Music] So I'm not going to get too much into that. I'm going to start talking about the different genres now.
Here's the thing: the book goes through and presents these different genres in what I think is kind of an arbitrary way. Page 110, they start talking about the concerto grosso, which is an orchestral piece, and they give examples and whatnot, and then and there's a listening guide here on page 112, 113, for a concerto grosso by J.S. Bach, and we will get to that piece, but not right now. Then the next genre they talk about is the fugue, and they talk about what a fugue is, and they have a listening guide for a Bach organ fugue in G minor, but we're not going to talk about the fugue right now. We're going to skip over those two genres, and we're going to start with opera, for reasons that I've already stated. Opera is the most important genre of the Baroque era because it's the most influential, and also remember that it was really the invention of opera right around 1600 that causes later, you know, music historians or professors like me to say, well, here's where we have a change in style: 1600. This is the beginning of the Baroque era in music largely because this is when opera is invented, and it's so influential on everything else that comes afterwards. So I think it makes more sense to start with opera. So we're going to start with opera, and then we're going to come back later and talk about concerto grosso, the fugue, or whatever. We're going to start with opera. Okay.
So what is opera? Well, it is drama that is sung to orchestral accompaniment. The word opera itself simply means work; it's the same route as to operate—something is to work it, right? So I guess they just couldn't think of something better to call this work, this type of artwork, so it just came to be known as a work, an opera. But it's a drama; it's a play that is sung to musical accompaniment. Now uh, an opera is obviously, in many ways, similar to like a Broadway musical, but it's different in one big important way: opera is usually sung from beginning to end; there is usually no spoken dialogue in an opera. This is very different from, let's say, like a Broadway musical, where actually most of the Broadway musical is is spoken dialogue, and then you and then the characters sort of break into song and start dancing around, and then they go back to spoken dialogue. That's not how it's done in most operas. Now there are some exceptions, but let's say traditional opera is sung from beginning to end with no spoken dialogue. Uh, now opera is such a big uh subject, and there's, as we will see, there's lots of vocabulary dealing with opera specifically. Uh, there's a kind of there's an interesting story of how opera came to be; it's kind of hard to pick any one place to start talking about it, right, um, because if we just start talking about it as the book does—the elements of opera—it kind of it ignores how opera came to be and how it evolved, and it sort of overlooks that, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years of evolution and change of this art form. Um, so I'm going to start with why opera was invented in the first place and who invented it, and then I'll talk about the characteristics of opera, and then I'll probably end up circling back, as the book does, and talking about the how opera came to be again, sort of relating and sort of tying it all together. Okay.
So notice I said a couple times now that opera was invented, unlike most musical genres which kind of evolved from something else, right? So, for example, organum evolved from Gregorian chant, because Gregorian chant plus additional lines of melody stuck on top of it, right? Opera was really kind of invented by a specific group of people for a specific reason, and that was the reason was to try and recreate or reinvent or bring back ancient Greek tragedy—Greek drama. If you're familiar with some of the great uh Greek tragedies, like Oedipus the King [Music], the the three great Greek tragedians of, let's say, like the fifth to fourth centuries BC: Aeschylus, uh Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, obviously. Um, [Music] Well, the humanists of the Renaissance—remember if we're talking about 1600, we're talking about, you know, sort of like the tail end of the Renaissance—and the people who were coming up with the idea of inventing opera, they were late Renaissance humanists; they were uh people who were interested in uh the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, and who in particular thought that ancient Greek drama was sort of like the highest art form ever created by anybody, and they had this idea: well, why don't we why don't we try and uh create something like that today, but of course in Italian rather than in Greek, because it's in Greek, no one's gonna understand it, right? And it was Italians who invented opera, so they decided to do something similar but in the Italian language. And the the group that kind of came up with this idea is known as the Camerata. Camerata just means chamber—sort of like a a chamber of commerce is a group of people, a group of businessmen in a town that you know get together and talk about things that affect local business. Well, this is a sort of a chamber not of businessmen uh of commerce, but of uh sort of like the arts and culture, and uh there were lots of these sort of little private clubs of people interested in literature, the visual arts, music, science, whatever, but especially also interested in ancient Greek and Roman uh culture, which remember was a major craze during the Renaissance. There was one particular group called the Bardi Camerata. Now Count Bardi was a very wealthy nobleman in Florence, and he had one of these sort of little intellectual clubs, one of these Camerata, and the members of this Camerata—a very illustrious group—actually included, among others, Vincenzo Galilei, who is a composer, music theorist, and father of Galileo Galilei. Also in this group uh is the guy who was kind of credited with creating the very first opera. [Music] Peri is his name—Jacopo is just Italian for Jacob, maybe his friends called him Jake. Jacopo Peri was one of the greatest singers of the day; he was not exactly a first-rate composer, but he was a he was an excellent singer and obviously a musician, and it was he, along with others in this group, who kind of formulated their ideas for what this new art form based on ancient Greek drama would be like. And one of the ideas that they had is: well, you know, it should be sung from beginning to end, because that's the way the Greeks did it. Now I don't think scholars today believe that ancient Greek drama was was really sung from beginning to end, but back in the late Renaissance, that's what they believed—they believed that Greek drama was actually sung, not just spoken. Now we know that parts of it definitely were sung, and that there was also dancing taking place—that's what the chorus in a Greek drama—they would actually sing and dance from one side of the stage to the other as they as they sang their lines. Uh, but back in the Renaissance, the scholars of the day believed that Greek drama was sung from beginning to end, and therefore that this new art form based on Greek drama should also be sung from beginning to end, and that's why opera traditionally is sung from beginning to end. But in order to pull this off, in order to make it work—singing from beginning to end—it was thought that we need to invent a new way of singing, a way of singing that is sort of like half speech, half singing, right? Because it was considered crucial that the audience be able to understand the words very clearly. So if you're singing all the time, it might be hard to understand the words, and then and therefore it might be hard for the audience to get really involved in the plot and to follow the story, to feel the emotions that they're supposed to feel. So it was thought—again, this is probably the way the Greeks did it—they must have had some way of singing that was basically speech-like. So they invented a new way of singing which is called recitative. You can, if you see it written down, it's r-e-c-i-t-a-t-i-v-e—the recitative; it's the same basic root word as to recite. So it's singing, but it's sort of like reciting or declaiming; it is written in such a way as to follow the natural pitch fluctuations and rhythms of speech. It's written out as music, but it's written in such a way as to be speech-like. That's what recitative is—invented along with opera. Now um, now I'm going to get into the elements of opera; I'll come back perhaps to talking a little bit more about the origins of opera when I talk specifically about Monteverdi, but let's get back to now this this elements of opera, and uh you will see that we will uh talk about recitative in here, and also about the other main style of singing that we find in an opera, which is aria. Aria and recitative are the two main styles of singing in opera.
Okay. Now every opera really begins with something called the libretto—l-i-b-r-e-t-t-o—libretto simply means the little book. The libra part—l-i-b-r—uh, it's it's the same root word as you find in library—a library is a place where books are stored—in in all the different Romance languages, the word for book is something similar to this—um, like in French it's livre, in Italian it's libro. A libretto is a little book, and it's basically just the texts, like the screenplay or the script, if you will, of the opera. Now in an opera, usually, almost always, the person who writes the libretto is not the composer. You have a librettist who writes the words, right, and then a composer who sets those words to music. Sometimes the librettist and the composer are working together; they're sitting down in a room somewhere and kind of like doing this work as a team, but very often they are not; in fact, sometimes the composer and the librettist never even meet. The librettist writes a libretto and maybe even, you know, sells it to a publishing company or sells it to an opera house, and then years later a composer might say, oh, you know what, that's a good libretto, I think I'll start writing some music uh based on that story. Initially, the libretti—that's the plural—librettos, we wouldn't say librettos, we'd say libretti—the libretti of um early opera were almost always based on ancient Greek or Roman myth or history, remember because that's that's the idea—we are sort of reviving, recreating, or reinventing ancient Greek drama, so it makes sense that the subject matter is going to be something from the ancient world, right? And we'll see this is certainly the case in the earliest surviving opera, Eurydice, which is based on a very old legend of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
So we have a libretto, a little book, written by a librettist; the librettist is a professional writer, a poet, and he is not the person who writes the notes—that's the composer. It says here, and again we're kind of we're looking back at 400 years of opera and looking at things that are that are particular maybe to some types of opera, not others. It says here: some operas are serious, some comic, some both. Well, um, our early operas were all pretty much serious. The idea of comic opera comes a little bit later, but comic doesn't necessarily mean like haha funny, like it's supposed to make you laugh. Uh, basically the difference between uh serious opera and comic opera, it's sort of like the difference between comedy and tragedy. Um, a comedy, generally speaking, broadly speaking, is a play that has a happy ending, and a tragedy is a play that has a uh as a tragic ending—a sad ending—but it's not necessarily uh baked into the definition of tragedy; it just kind of turned out that way that it was just kind of understood: if you're writing a tragedy, it has a sad ending. Usually the main character dies or suffers some great loss, usually as a result of some um some inherent weakness or fault; it's it's the main character's destiny. Sometimes the word tragic flaw is used, which some scholars quibble about, but uh nonetheless, the main character undergoes his or her downfall in a tragedy, whereas in a comedy um at the end at the end of a comedy, usually the main characters get married, and uh there's very often a wedding scene at the end of a comedy, and it's sort of a way of affirming that, you know, life goes on and everyone will live happily ever after, whereas at the end of the tragedy, the main characters usually die or suffer some terrible loss.
Now there are lots of different genres of opera today, different sort of subgenres, I guess you could say. Opera itself is a genre, but there are lots of lots of different subtypes, just like I mean think of the movies, and I've made the point before, I'll make it again: opera was for a very long time what people had instead of the movies. Before the movies were invented, opera was mass entertainment, right? It wasn't just like high-class snooty people who went to the opera; everybody went to the opera, just like today everybody goes to the movies. You know, you probably don't even know anyone who's never been to a movie, but you probably know lots of people who have never been to the opera. So it's a little different today than it was back in the day, but just like in the movies, you know, you have different genres of movies, and some people like certain types and not other types. You know, you've got your romantic comedies, you have your historical costume drama type movies, you got science fiction movies, you have I don't know, buddy cop movies, or you know, heist movies, or whatever—lots and lots of different subcategories in opera as well, and also lots of different national styles. So opera begins in Italy, right? And for a very long time, uh, you know, Italian was considered the only really proper language to write an opera in. So even if you were a, let's say, a French composer or a German composer, an English composer, you would probably write your operas in Italian. But other national styles did develop, so they developed a distinct French style of opera using the French language. Um, much later, a German style of opera—not as much opera in English. So we are going to look at one opera in English, but there's just not nearly as much opera in the English language as there is in Italian. Italian is still number one, French probably number two. Later on, we get into the 19th century, we have opera in Russian, opera in the Czech language, in Polish, or whatever, and this is a sort of a manifestation of the rise of nationalism, as different composers from different countries kind of they kind of express their national pride, their patriotism, by composing operas that are in the language of their country, and very often based on, let's say, the the myths or the folklore or whatever of their own country, not based on ancient Greek or Roman stuff. So in the early days, yes, operas were always based on ancient Greek or Roman myth and history, but as time went on, pretty much anything could be the subject of an opera. So, for example, if if a an author writes a book and it becomes a bestseller, maybe that would be a good uh something to to turn into an opera, just the same again with movies today. When someone writes a best-selling book, uh, you know, makes a lot of money, someone's gonna get the idea, well, maybe it'll make a lot of money as a movie too—why don't we make a movie out of it? Okay. So a lot of the actually the conventions of movies today are really borrowed from opera.
Okay. Now uh, over here on page 118, they go through all these different voice types. So we've already learned about different voice ranges, right? So you know, for women you've got soprano and alto and mezzo-soprano in between, and for men you've got tenor, baritone, and bass. But look at all these very specific voice types: like coloratura soprano, lyric soprano, dramatic soprano, lyric tenor, dramatic tenor, basso, right? So there are there are different specific voice types, and different roles, different characters, and different operas that are written specifically for these different voice types. So, for example, if you wanted to become an opera singer, that was your goal, that was your life's dream, you know, you would go to music school, and you'd certainly be training your voice, but you would also have to start making yourself familiar with which roles are suited to your particular voice, and you'd have to start learning those roles. So just because you're a tenor, yeah, but are you more of a lyric tenor or a dramatic tenor? In other words, you have a like a not just a tenor range, but like a really big powerful voice for these dramatic tenor type roles. Same thing if you're a soprano: if you're a coloratura soprano, that means you're very you have a very nimble, very high voice; you can sing lots of rapid notes. Um, but if you are a lyric soprano, right, then your voice is uh is has a different kind of quality to it; it might not be at quite as high; you might not be have that same technique for lots of quick notes, which is it's a a as a maybe a lighter sound. So all these are sort of qualitative rather than having to do just with with pitch, and opera singers have to start learning these roles uh and memorizing them. Opera is done completely from memory, of course, um when it's performed, and it's still live, and pre- and operas can often be, you know, easily three hours long, and and opera singers have to start learning these roles and memorizing them because you never know when you're going to get a call that's going to make your career. A lot of opera singers have gotten their big break because somebody was sick, right? Singers, if once they get sick, they can't sing, right? And so you get a sniffle or something, and you know, maybe a role that you've been rehearsing and practicing for weeks and months, well, you can't do it, so now they're going to find somebody else because the show has to go on, right? So a manager will call, you know, a bunch of people, and if you're an opera singer, you might get a phone call like, hey, can you uh fly out to New York tomorrow and uh sing, you know, be the main lead role in Don Giovanni? And hopefully you are ready and prepared to take that call and walk into a performance the next day and sing that role because you prepared it ahead of time. And if not, somebody else is going to get that job, and somebody else is going to get that big break. Also remember: opera singers, it's never amplified; they are filling that opera house with the sound of their voice without any microphones or amplification. This is what makes opera singing very different—or classical singing generally, but especially opera—because an opera singer not only has to have a big sound—fill that concert hall without amplification—they have to sing over an orchestra that is playing at the same time. Here's another term for you: in an opera, we have what's called a pit orchestra—called a pit orchestra because there's a recessed area—again, Broadway musicals have the same thing—a recessed area under the stage where the orchestra sits and plays. And let's say, you know, side view of the stage is here, and the audience is over here, then the pit is like down here someplace, because the idea is the audience really shouldn't see the orchestra; I mean, they might be able to see them, but they aren't supposed to be seen; they aren't up there on stage, right? They're supposed to be kind of in the background; of course, they have to be heard, so we can't put them completely, you know, like in another room, but we put them down in this pit because they aren't sort of meant to be seen, and we don't want to detract any visual attention away from what's going on stage. So the conductor of an opera
Is is standing at the edge of the pit, where he can see what's going on on stage, and he can follow the singers. Because the conductor's really following the singers, the singers kind of take the lead; the conductor is following them, and then the orchestra players, who are watching the conductor, are following him or her. The orchestra players down in the pit cannot see what's going on on stage; it's going on over their heads, so they have to follow the conductor, and the conductor follows the singers, and hopefully everybody stays together.
Okay, now here on page 118, is where we get to the words "aria" and "recitative". The word "aria" simply means "song," really. In fact, there's a word in the English language that is similar: the word "air". It's spelled the same way as the air that you breathe, but it's an old-fashioned word for song; "air" and the counterpart in Italian is simply "aria", and an aria is simply a song. It's very straightforward, right? It has a beautiful melody; it has a sing-songy kind of rhythm; it has words that rhyme; it has maybe verses and choruses—the stuff that we think of when we think of a song, of a pop song today, right? That's what an aria is. Aria is song-like singing, but "recitative" is speech-like singing, and we have to have—we have a mix of both in most opera. We have some arias and some recitative, and they have different purposes.
The purpose of the recitative, the speech-like singing, is basically kind of like to get information out to the audience, in essence, to move the plot along. Remember, since opera is sung from beginning to end, this poses some challenges in terms of depicting action. For example, I mean, stuff has to take place in the plot, in the storyline; in order for there to be a story, there have to be events that take place. But the problem is, it's hard to have these events taking place while people are singing. I mean, it can be done, but it might be easier to find a way to sort of tell the audience what has happened rather than show them what has happened.
So, for example, let's say that—uh, let's say that I'm writing an opera, and in this opera there's sort of a love triangle thing going on. Uh, there are—there's a guy named Bob, and another guy named Joe. Bob and Joe are both in love with Emily, but Emily doesn't love Bob; she loves Joe, right? And so Bob and Joe, you know, there's surely there's going to be trouble between these two. All right, let's say that Bob and Joe encounter each other in the street, and there are harsh words, and swords are drawn, and they fight each other, and unfortunately Bob kills Joe. All right, now that—that's an event that has happened; that's something that's happened that's going to drive the plot along, right? But that might be something that's kind of difficult to—to actually show taking place if there has to be singing and music going on, right?
What if we did it this way instead? What if we had a scene where Emily is in her bedroom, brushing her beautiful long hair, preparing for her date that night with Joe, right, whom she loves, and she's thinking about what a wonderful evening she's going to have with Joe as she's looking in the mirror, brushing her hair, and then suddenly in rushes her friend and says, "Oh no, Emily, I have terrible news; Bob and Joe got into a fight, and Bob killed Joe." Okay, now instead of having to actually show the sword fight, I can just tell about it, right? And not only that, now we can see Emily's reaction, and Emily, of course, will be heartbroken, and she'll start to cry, and she'll start to sing a beautiful aria in which she expresses her feelings of loss, and "How am I ever going to go on without my beloved Joe?" and whatever, right?
So the purpose of the recitative is to present information, kind of like, to the audience—information, crucial plot details, and that's why it makes sense that it's speech-like, because the audience has to be able to follow what's going on; it's important that they understand the words clearly. And then, in reaction to that, we might have an aria. Now the purpose of the aria is for the characters to reflect and express their emotions, right? And that can be done really almost totally through the music itself; the words aren't quite as important, right? We can get the sense, even if we don't understand Italian, we could probably get the sense just from the—the—the music itself what Emily's, in this case, uh, her—what her feelings are, right?
So, two different purposes, generally speaking, for recitative and aria. Recitative gets information out and moves the plot along and is speech-like for that reason. Aria is uh, for expressing emotion, and there's much more—it's much more musically satisfying, right? Um, in an aria, there's a—there's always going to be emphasis on a very beautiful melody; it has to be catchy; it has to stay with people in a way that the musical part of recitative doesn't really, right? And of course, different audiences in different eras, in different places, might have different priorities in what it is that they are getting out of opera, right?
So, for example, in the early days of opera, when opera was sort of private entertainment for the elite of the aristocracy—um, yeah, these—these people were really interested in the ancient Greek and Roman history—um, and myth—uh, and—uh, these scholars, these humanists who invented opera were probably most interested in the plot. But later, when opera became sort of like mass entertainment, the average middle-class person might be, you know, a little bit less interested in this old-fashioned ancient Greek myth or history, and they also might be more interested, actually, in the music than in the plot. They might be going to the opera just because they have a favorite singer that they want to hear sing a particular role, or they just love the melody of this or that aria, so they're interested really more in the music than maybe in the plot and in the words. And as we go through the history of opera, it goes back and forth and back and forth.
Certain composers, like Monteverdi, for example, who I said is the first great composer of opera, the first great master of opera, he believed that the words were more important than the notes, than the music, and that the music really was there to serve the words and to try and highlight the meaning of the words and to try and reinforce the emotion that is being expressed by the words. But later, let's say when we get to Mozart, Mozart believed that the music was more important than the words, because that's what the audience was coming for, right? And—and so again, different times, different places. You know, for example, in France—and this is maybe more late 18th century, early 19th century, well, well on into the 19th century—there's a style of French opera called "grand opera," and in grand opera the emphasis isn't even really on either the—the—the words and the plot or necessarily the music so much as it is on having huge sort of effects—of, let's say, you know, hundreds of people on stage and big and amazing uh, sort of stage effects. They actually had sort of special effects sometimes, very elaborate uh, machinery that could simulate people flying and flames and explosions and, you know, ships sailing or whatever. And so sort of, you know, sort of like today, some people enjoy movies where there's a lot of special effects, and maybe the plot isn't that great, you know, maybe the characters are kind of like cardboard cutouts, but there's such amazing special effects and visual—it's not like, "How did they do that?" Similarly with opera.
This is why it's kind of hard to talk in general terms about opera, because although opera starts out with a very specific purpose, right—reinventing Greek drama, reviving Greek drama—um, over the hundreds of years of its evolution, there are so many different types of opera and—and—uh, that—that it becomes harder to generalize and say, "Well, opera is like this," but there are certain things that all operas have. They all tend to have singing throughout; they all have a libretto; they all have a pit orchestra; they all have aria and recitative and choruses as well. So an opera always has a chorus. Again, this is something that's taken right out of—out of Greek drama, and the role of the chorus as it was in Greek drama is sort of like the—the chorus—whoever is in the chorus, they're sort of like not the main characters, but like the extras; they are the townspeople or the soldiers or the sailors or the—what—they're the other people, not the main characters. And um, what they are often doing is sort of observing what's going on between the main characters and trying to understand it, reflect on it, make sense of it, right? And of course, in an opera they are going to sing, and this is what gives the composer an opportunity to have, you know, mass numbers of people singing all at once.
There are other kinds of ensembles in an opera. So an ensemble is when you have more than one person singing at a time. So, for example, duets. Almost every opera at some point is going to have at least one or two lovers' duets where the main male and female character uh, sing a duet; might turn into a trio. Like, so take my—my idea of the opera about what was it, Bob and Joe and Emily. Let's say earlier on, before poor Joe gets killed off, let's say that I don't know, Emily and Joe are singing their lovers' duet, and they're, you know, looking into each other's eyes, and they're singing about how much they love each other and they can't live without each other and—and uh, whatever. And then offstage Bob—you see Bob kind of sneak on; he's observing these two, and—and maybe he'll start singing, of course they can't hear Bob, you know, but he'll start singing a few lines of his own about, "Well, I'm, you know, I'm never gonna let—I'm not gonna let Joe have Emily; she's all mine, and you know, I'll fix that Joe next time I see him," or whatever. Okay, so we have duets, we have trios, possibly quartets even in an opera, right? Which means that it is possible to have polyphonic texture in an opera, right? It's not usual; usually it's homophonic texture where we have one main melody being sung by the singer and uh, accompaniment being provided by the pit orchestra, but it is possible if we have, let's say, a duet or a trio or some kind of ensemble number within an opera, it is possible to have polyphonic texture. But remember, one of the reasons why we have this switch to mostly homophonic texture at the beginning, the Baroque era, is because that was considered proper for opera; it's too difficult to understand the words when you have polyphonic texture. This is something we talked about back in the Renaissance, how, for example, in sacred music, the church kind of frowned upon—at one point anyway, during the Counter-Reformation, the church kind of frowned upon having too much polyphonic texture in sacred music because it made it harder to understand the words, because even though everyone might be singing the same words, they're singing them with different rhythms and different melodic shapes, so the words become obscured. In an opera, you know, understanding the words is essential to being able to follow the plot, so the early opera composers said, "No, no, we—polyphonic texture won't work; it's got to be homophonic texture, one melody at a time and some background accompaniment."
Okay, uh, what else common to all operas is the overture, sometimes called the prelude, but usually called the overture. The overture is a piece of purely instrumental music that is performed by the pit orchestra before the actual opera begins, and this is sort of like the opening credits music that you sometimes have uh, in a movie. Now these days a lot of movies just kind of start off with, you know, the action, but an opera usually starts with maybe a 10-minute-long instrumental work called the overture, and the overture will help, first of all, to sort of set the mood and might present some of the themes that we'll hear uh, later on being sung in the arias or in the choruses, but it also has a very practical purpose—it used to, anyway—provide a little buffer, so that let's say the opera is supposed to begin at seven o'clock, all right, but you're running late and you get to the opera house and you buy your ticket—um, well, as long as you're not too late and let's say you're five minutes late, you can get in and take your seat and not interrupt any of the action because the action hasn't started yet, because the first thing is the overture. So the orchestra will play the overture, and then the curtain will rise, and you will have the first scene of the opera and the first either recitative or aria or whatever it is. And so that's the overture. Almost all operas have overtures, and also uh, when we get to talking about um, oratorio, which is a another genre but similar in many ways to opera, an oratorio also has an overture or a prelude, a purely instrumental piece to start things off.
Okay, so now I've gotten to the bottom of page 119, and this is where the book starts to talk about the evolution of opera. I already talked a little bit about this stuff. It says here, "Opera was born in Italy; its way was prepared by musical discussions among a small group of nobles, poets, and composers who began to meet regularly in Florence." Florence is like ground zero of the Renaissance, right? Who began to—to meet regularly in Florence around 1575. This group was known as the Camerata—specifically, Count Bardi's Camerata. They don't mention Count Bardi in the book, but that's—that's the guy who hosted this group, and in fact it's called the Camerata because they met in a big room; "camerata" literally means "chamber," and so they would meet regularly in a big room in Bardi's palace, and they would discuss whatever—they might have a guest lecturer, maybe a university professor or a scholar, and they would just talk about whatever subject within the arts or within culture or ancient Greek or Roman history or literature or whatever they felt like. And they mention here, top of page 120, "The Camerata wanted to create a new vocal style modeled on the music of ancient Greek tragedy." No actual dramatic music had come down to them from the Greeks—that is, you know, same problem we have today; we don't know what most—you know, we have so few examples of Greek music that have been preserved, and none of it from these uh, Greek tragedies. We know that they were at least in part musical, but we don't know what the actual music sounded like, and neither did these guys. And so that's why they had to kind of come up with this idea of recitative on their own. And it says here, "The Camerata wanted the vocal line of this new genre of music they're inventing; they wanted the vocal line to follow the rhythms and pitch fluctuations of speech, because it was modeled after speech. This new vocal style became known as 'recitative,' recited."
Then they get into talking about the very first opera by anybody, and this is "Euridice" by Jacopo Peri. So remember, Peri is one of the members of this Camerata, and he is credited with composing the very first opera, and it's based on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. This is a story of Greek myth. Orpheus—uh, a son of Apollo, so he's actually half-human, half-god; he's sort of a demigod. And because Apollo, his father, is the god of music, among other things, Orpheus has tremendous supernatural musical powers. Uh, Orpheus plays the harp and sings, and when he plays his harp and sings, even the trees and the rocks apparently start to move around and dance. Um, Orpheus is madly in love with Eurydice, and she is madly in love with him, and they're blissfully happy together, and they decide to get married. Unfortunately, on their wedding day, Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies, goes down into the underworld. The underworld—um, in the Greek conception, ancient Greek conception of sort of like the afterlife, the underworld is a place called Tartarus, sometimes called Hades, but Hades is actually the name of the god who rules over the underworld. Hades is a brother of Zeus, and whereas Zeus is like the king of the gods and the ruler of the universe, uh, his brother Hades is the ruler of the—of Tartarus, which is kind of like just a—a big shadowy cave under the ground someplace where the souls of the dead just kind of mope around like zombies. It's not really a punishment, really; it's just where everybody goes when they die, and the dead souls are just kind of like pale, lifeless versions of their former selves, and they just kind of mope around and do nothing. It's a very pitiful existence. Anyway, Eurydice dies, goes into the underworld, and Orpheus is left behind uh, and is heartbroken and decides on a radical course of action. He decides, "Well, I'm going to go into the underworld, and I'm going to try and make a deal with Hades; I'm going to find Hades, and I'm going to sing my songs for him; I'm going to sing about how much I love Eurydice and how much I want her back, and hopefully I'll be able to win him over, because after all, I'm the greatest musician there's ever been; I can make the rocks and the trees dance around; surely I can make even the lord of the dead, the god Hades—I can move him, and I can get him to release Eurydice." So that's what I'm going to do. So he goes into the underworld, and according to the original uh, myth, he's actually successful. He finds Hades; he sings his songs, and Hades says, "Oh, that was so beautiful; you got me; I'll let her go." However, there's one condition: "You are going to walk out of here first, and Eurydice is going to walk behind you. As the two of you are walking, you are not allowed to turn around and look and make sure that she's following you; you have to take it on faith. After all, I'm a god; I wouldn't steer you wrong. So if you can resist turning around and not looking, then she can go with you, but if you turn around and look, then she's going to stay with me." And wouldn't you know it, Orpheus—Eurydice—Orpheus can't help himself; he loves her so much; he tries to sort of sneak a quick—quick peek backwards, and uh, in the original myth, Eurydice unfortunately has to stay in the underworld.
Now, when this opera was written, it was written for a specific purpose; it was written as a part of the celebration, the festivities, the entertainment at what was then the wedding of the century; it was the wedding of the King of France, King Henry IV, to Marie de Medici. The Medici were, at that time, probably the richest people in Europe—this famous banking family in Florence—and their daughter was marrying the King of France; very big deal. Uh, and so this opera was actually performed for the guests at this wedding. Now, in some ways, it's the perfect uh, story for uh, this kind of thing, because it involves young love, and of course, since Orpheus is a musician and a singer, there's sort of a reason built into the plot for there to be singing; it's not like an artificial thing that's tacked on; it's part of the story. Orpheus has to sing; that's what he does. Only problem is that ending is kind of a bummer, right? So uh, the composer, Jacopo Peri, actually changed the ending; he made it sort of a happy ending, so that, you know, the wedding guests wouldn't be too bummed out with this tragic, sad story, right?
Okay, now um, although this is the earliest surviving opera, composed in 1600, it is not considered the first great opera, the first masterpiece of opera, and this is because Peri—Jacopo Peri—the creator of "Euridice," was not what we might consider to be a first-rate composer. He was certainly a great singer, and he was probably a decent composer, but he was not as great a composer as Claudio Monteverdi. We're going to talk about Monteverdi next time. Monteverdi composed many operas, but his first—in 1607, I believe—um, was based on the same story. Monteverdi was not a member of the Camerata, mostly just because he didn't live in Florence at the time, but he was well acquainted with some of the members of the Camerata, and he had some of the same ideas at the same time as they did about uh, recitative, for example—um, about uh, creating this new art form. So he was in contact, writing letters back and forth with the members of the Camerata, and having many of the same notions and ideas, and he actually was able to attend a performance—not the very first performance, but a later performance—of Peri's opera "Euridice." Monteverdi saw and heard this performance and said, "You know, this is pretty good, but I think I can do better." So he set to work on his own version of the same story, and he called his opera "Orfeo," named it after the male character, Orpheus, because he changed it to Italian with an "f" instead of a "ph," but it's the same name—"Orfeo" instead of "Orpheus"—the same story, whereas Peri uh, based his—or titled his opera "Euridice" after the female character in that story, but it's the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. So Monteverdi's first opera, "Orfeo," composed a few years after the very earliest surviving opera, based on the same story, and this is what we're going to talk about next time, because I'm pretty much out of time here. So uh, for next time, start reading about Claudio Monteverdi, beginning on page 121. Read about "Orfeo," uh, listen to the example—uh, which is a recitative, and it's a—it's a—it's that part of the opera; it's from Act II; it's the moment in the opera when Orfeo—or Orpheus—learns that Eurydice has died and resolves to go into the underworld and somehow bring her back. All right, so read and listen, let's say, through—and then also about Henry Purcell. I guess we might as well, while we're at it, uh, go through and read and listen to all of this section on opera, which includes both Monteverdi and Henry Purcell and his opera considered to be the greatest opera in the English language, "Dido and Aeneas." So that will take you up to and including page 126 in the ninth brief edition, and we'll talk about those next time. See you then.