Alright! This is part two of our discussion about genres.
We're talking about vocal genres now.
We're going to take these in kind of a chronological order so that you can see how they build
on one another.
So the oldest music that we know about for singers is called 'Gregorian
Chant.' It's named after Pope Gregory, not the guy who wrote it all but he was
the one who said lets organize it all by putting it in a book so we can make some
sense out of it, so, we call it after him, 'Gregorian Chant.'
This is music from the Catholic Church.
It's
basically everybody sing the melody, not very exciting
and frankly in real life you're probably not going to hear it very much although
there has been a remarkable
popularity of recordings of Gregorian Chant over the last ten years or so.
I don't know if it's because Gregorian Chant is
very relaxing, you know it's not busy, it's just this lovely line of music being
sung by men,
and maybe people just need that sort of soothing sound in their lives when things are
sort of tough.
So, the recordings have been very popular,
but you're not going to go to a concert
and hear Gregorian Chant. It's just not going to happen.
You might however if you go to a Catholic Church that still does the
traditional Latin Liturgy;
you might have the opportunity to hear the Gregorian Chant done the way
that it was in the past and we'll talk about
the importance
of that music
in terms of some other things when we talk about music at that time period.
So, we have all these different chants
and together,
we put them together and we end up with
a mass.
So when we talk about the Catholic Mass, really all that is is a collection of
Gregorian Chant
plus scripture readings
and whatever sermons and all the other bits that you would think of as being part of a church
service.
So Gregorian Chant...
put them all together.. you get a mass.
There's a special type of mass for the dead which is called the requiem
mass, and its again taking Gregorian Chant, put them all together, but it has some
differences from the regular service because obviously it's a service for the
dead. So we'll talk about that in more detail later too!
But you need to know, Gregorian Chant, makes up mass,
and the requiem mass.
So that's the oldest stuff that we know about.
Now there are lots of popular kinds of styles of vocal music that we've always
had, popular music,
people sing in the streets, there's folk songs
but that's not the point of this class, and we're not really going to talk about that
very much.
Coming after Gregorian Chant we have some other kinds of vocal genres like
motets and organum, things like that we're not going to talk about that
right now because really, again, it's something you're not going to hear
much in real life.
The first vocal genre that you really get to hear much in concerts
is the madrigal
which was a
sort of... it's not a popular music but it was popular, you
know it wasn't like people sang it on the street corner, you had to be trained
to sing it, but it's enjoyable
and this is music that's about four hundred - five hundred years old now. It's
still enjoyable to listen to.
Lots of choirs, high school choirs, call themselves madrigal choirs.
Sometimes they actually sing madrigals, but most of the time they just use the name.
But a madrigal was generally
a kind of
light piece.
It's vocal, usually with no instruments at all, and we call that acapella. We'll talk
about that more later too.
Sometimes it tells a story. Sometimes it's expressing
your feelings about something
but it's generally fairly short,
has multiple different kinds of voice lines so it's very complex in terms of
the musical structure.
But it's
what we would call accessible. It's music that you can listen to and you can
understand what's going on
and you kind of get it and that's
important.
The sort of light hearted madrigals
are often full of fa-la-la's and tra-la-la's. So if you hear music that has a lot of fa-la-la...
even the
Christmas carol with the same kind of thing,
it comes from that madrigal tradition.
Basically, it was an Italian piece first
and then the English liked it so much they sort of appropriated it so we have
Italian madrigals and we have English madrigals...
nobody else does it
but those two countries.
So coming on the heels of madrigal
we have
the Protestant Reformation.
So the Catholic Church has its own music. The Protestants needed theirs as well.
So what they came up with is what we call the chorale.
And that's another word that's kind of confusing for people because sometimes
people will call their
vocal group, their
choral group, a chorale.
So again it's one of those, it's a genre and might also be
an ensemble.
But basically the chorale is just a hymn tune.
So... you think your basic four part harmoney like any church hymn
goes all the way back to Martin Luther and the
Protestant Reformation.
Now let's get into
the big three
vocal things
that you're going to hear a lot if you go to vocal concerts.
Let's start with the smallest one and that is the 'cantata.'
If you've taken Italian or Spanish or probably several other foreign languages
use it!
Cantare
means to sing
so if you remember that
'cantare' - 'cantata' - then you'll remember that that's a vocal genre.
So a cantata is a church piece
originally although there are some secular, what we call secular cantatas,
as well, thad don't have religious connotations.
But they come out of the Protestant tradition again
So remember, there's no TV, there's no NFL football, people don't have anything else to do on
Sunday. They're going to stay at church for a long time.
So you would go to church,
you would sing some hymns,
there'd be services, there'd be bible readings and all the things that we sort of
associate with a church service today.
But in the middle
they would have a cantata.
So the composer
who is often usually the choir director as well would
take some hymn tune usually
and write a whole cantata based on that hymn tune.
So,
you as an audience member, as a congregation member, you know that hymn already, you've sung it
every sunday for your whole life or however many, you know,
every other sunday for your whole life.
So you know that tune really well. You don't have to have it
sung for you exactly as it was originally.
The composer would take that tune,
would make
usually maybe a straightforward kind of approach to where the whole choir sings it
in four part harmony. But then it would add
another movement,
there might be a solo
based on the same kind of text - not the same text exactly, because that would be
boring just to hear the same text over and over again -
but some related text
usually not even from the Bible. Most of the time they used poetic kinds of text for that just like
many hymns in the
hymnbook do... They're not
scriptural, they're somebody wrote a nice
poem about something scriptural.
Put it all together:
might have a solo, might have some choruses,
might have another solo
might have a little instrumental interlude in the middle.
Put it all together, lasts about twenty minutes.
Sort of like your half-time entertainment in the middle of your
church service
in the 1600's.
Today we use that term a little bit differently. Lots of churches do what they
call Easter cantatas or
Christmas cantatas and those are
similar because they have multiple movements, they usually have soloists,
but we don't
usually think of those as being quite the same as a cantata in the traditional
sense.
Then we also have
a bigger kind of piece called the oratorio. Remember
a cantata only lasted twenty-thirty minutes at the most.
An oratorio might last
two or three hours.
The oratorio came out of
sort of a problem that a composer had
because he was in England
and during Lent
all the theaters closed, and he had been making his living doing opera. Well, and
during the forty days of Lent
-no opera!
Can't make any money!
Trying to figure out some other way of to do that. Came up with the oratorio. So it has
things that people really liked about opera.
It's dramatic...
usually tells a story - it has all your favorite singers - it has an orchestra!
So he took all the best bits of opera, took out the costumes,
took out the scenery,
took out the acting,
so basically it's like a stage, you know we've got a choir there with soloists,
and did this thing called an oratorio.
You know one of those. The most famous one is Handel's Messiah which has the hallelujah
chorus and everybody in the world knows that.
So that's an example of a movement from an oratorio.
It was a concert production.
Probably done mostly in concert halls although today we often see that done in a church.
Lots of movements.
Lasts a long time as a general rule.
Opera - now here's the biggee! This is like - take everything there is grand about
music,
and theater, and dance,
and lighting, and costumes, and scenery, and you've got opera.
So opera start around 1600 and we'll learn but much more about opera
later.
But basically opera is
telling a story
- whereas a cantata does not
and oratorio may not -
...tells a story so there are characters, they have names,
they have
roles, you have servant, master,
next-door neighbor, whatever their part happens to be.
They all sing.
There's no talking in opera as a general rule,
and there's an orchestra that accompanies them,
and they wear costumes and they
put scenery on the stage so it's a big dramatic production.
So, opera, oratorio, cantata
have different functions,
different size,
but they have three things
in common,
and that is the types of vocal genres that happen within
the genre. We haven't had this in instrumental music... instrumental music just sort of
was there.
These three big genres have
little ones that fit within them, so let's talk about those three.
First is what we call 'recitative.'
It looks like recite-uh-tive - but it's an Italian word, so it's rech-uh-tuh-teev.
So in recitative, it is what you would think of as the dialogue.
So instead of
my
talking to you about this, I would say
'this is a recitative,'
and I'm going to tell you all about what it means now!'
And that would be it! Not very exciting, even if it was sung by someone
who sings better than I do.
So it's really sort of sung speech, think of it as early rap.
You know it's
rhythmic,
it's got a little bit of pitch to it.
Generally speaking, not all that exciting. When you go to recitals,
not going to hear much recitative.
It's just
you know, it has a function. It's function is to advance the story; I'm telling you what
I'm thinking,
I'm telling you what's happening.
The accompaniment for it is usually not very big.
So in the early days, it might just be a harpsichord
and a cello.
And if you hear that, and you just hear a little bit of singing that's not very
exciting, "Ha!"
That's recitative!
So that happens in all three of those genres, it's a way of advancing a plot
or providing a bit of information that you need to connect your two pieces together.
So, recitative, happens in all,
opera, contata, oratorio.
The part that you're familiar with, when you think opera, the thing that you
have in your head,
is what we call the aria.
So we've been recitativing along, that's not really a word, I'm just making that up...
singing our little recitatives, telling our story,
something has happened...
my loved one is leaving me, he's going to war!
OH! I now have to sing a dramatic aria...
to tell you how distraught I am about him going off to war.
So all the action stops
and i'm going to
sing gloriously.
The whole orchestra is going to accompany me.
It's going to be a
heart-wrenching, emotional experience.
Now, not all arias are heart-wrenching, emotional experiences, but they do all
have in common
the idea that
this character is now
reflecting on what has just happened
or perhaps
thinking about what is about to happen. Sometimes it happens as a precursor to something
else,
but we're getting the sense of that character's inner thoughts.
As we get later in opera we will see that that distinction between recitative
and aria sort of goes away and it all becomes just beautiful singing that kind
of
goes together.
And we have lovely conversations
in aria instead of having aria be, 'Okay I'm done with that and I'm now doing
my big heroic aria.
But it's usually a solo although we so have duo arias and we
will see by the time we get to Mozart, that
you might have six people singing an aria together...so...
we'll figure out how that works later!
So the final thing that you would probably encounter in opera, oratorio, concerto
cantata, sorry
is the chorus.
We've already talked about two things that happen with solo singers.
But, you know, we've got to employ a lot of people.
We're going to put a lot of people on the stage a stage in most operas.
So there's usually a chorus.
They will often come in
if you have a crowd scene, then you've got to have a crowd.
So the crowd is going to sing and they're going to sing a piece called
a 'chorus,' and it is sung by the 'chorus.' So again that's kind of confusing; the
singers and type of piece they sing are
called the same thing.
But in most operas they're not actually
telling the story
they are commenting on the story in sort of the way that the Greek
chorus did in early theater.
So they might provide
sort of the general commentary about how we all feel about what just happened
or
a lot of times they will be
if there's a wedding or something they will be
the wedding guests,
and they will all sing about how happy they are about people getting married.
So, all three of those, recitative,
aria, chorus, all happen in
opera,
cantata,
and oratorio.
So we've got three little things that happen to make three
big things.
So the last vocal genre that I'm going to talk about briefly is called the 'art
song' (art song)
or the German term is 'lead' and the plural of that is 'leaders' so if you hear any of
those terms
they all refer to the same thing.
This is something that kind of comes around in the 19th Century
and it is a piece for a trained singer.
So, me, not singing any art song!
It's usually based on poetry. The 19th Century composers loved
poetry. They had a number of amazing poets to choose from, so you might hear
the same poem
with music composed by six or ten different composers because they...
everybody loved this poem... this is a great poem... let's all make
some kind of piece to go with it.
So we have a trained singer
and they are accompanied by a piano.
That's a real big distinction between art song and almost every other vocal genre
that you will hear, is that it has piano,
not orchestra!
So, again, something that can be confusing as an audience member, you're going to a
vocal recital.
Most singers aren't gonna hire an orchestra to play the aria accompaniment for them
so you might go to a recital and they will have on the program, 'I'm doing this
aria from
Don Giovanni.'
Well, we know Don Giovanni is an opera. Therefore it had an orchestra to start
with.
But they've not hired an orchestra to play for them because that's very
expensive plus the rooms proably not big enough for them so what they will do is have
a pianist
play that orchestra part
condensed highly...
we call it a reduction - reduced down - They're playing orchestra part on the
piano. So that's something that can be confusing if it says it's from an
opera. Just assume it is an aria - if it doesn't say it's from an opera, you should
assume that it's an art song and it was intended to be for piano and singer.
So, quick recap! We staretd with Gregorian Chant which makes mass and requiem,
then we had madrigals, and we had
the chorale that comes out of Lutheran Church,
Then we have opera, cantata, and oratorio, each of which has resitative,
aria, and chorus,
and finally, the sort of the last development in vocal music was
the art song. So those are our vocal genres!