1st stanza

3rd: duet

4: 2nd

6: duet

7: hymella (?)

--> structure is symmetrical, chiasm/chastic

• Fourth Sonata (Canzona) in g minor by Cazzati (?)
  • Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars in a minor canon
  • Contrasting sections
  • Sections separated by cadences
  • Change in tempo from fast to slow and then slow again
  • -> basically it's a piece of music

• Dance suite
• Instrumental canzona/sonata/early concerto
• 1650s-60s

• Opus 1: 12 trio sonatas
• Opus 2: 12 sonatas for two violins and violone or harpsichord
• Opus 3: 12 sonatas for two violins, violone/archlute, and organ continuo
• Opus 4: 12 sonatas for two violins, and violone or harpsichord
• Opus 5: 12 sonatas for violin and violone or harpsichord
• Opus 6: 12 concerti grossi for two violines and violoncello in the concertino group and two violins, viola and basso

• 1. A procession of minor masquers and/or antimasquers.
• 2. A speech or dialogue
• 3. Anti-masque songs and dances
• 4. Revelation of the fixed scenery of the masque, for example, by drawing aside a curtain, if this was not already done before the first speech

• 5. A song, ending the antimasque
• 6. Start of the masque proper with the entry of the grand masquers, dancing or riding on a festival cart, and their descent to the floor
• 7. Another song
• 8. The main dance of the masquers
• 9. A third song
• 10. Dancing with the spectators of the opposite sex ("revels")
• 11. A fourth song.
• 12. The masquers' return to the cart or stage and final dance or chorus.
• (13. A banquet)

• Earliest surviving all-sung English stage work
• French Overtures (moreso the Purcell, I guess)
  
• Dance airs in the French style
• Multiple uses of choruses
• Laments: Blow does not have a ground bass, Purcell obviously does.

• Opening recit: descending tetrachord used as both 8-7-6-5 and then as 5-4-3-2 (SO COOL)
• Five-bar descending tetrachord, instead of 4-bar, so it's offset
  • "Creating a kind of crazed, strained asymmetry" --Hepo
  • Repeated 11 times throughout the aria.
    
• Slow recitative style
• She almost never cadences at the same as the bass
  • Does this make it fortspinnung?!
    • No.
      • Just no.
  • She isn't laid in Earth until she and her fate (the bass line) cadence at the same time.

• "Laid" of "laid in earth" is descending, and the F# on "Earth" is the lowest pitch. Get it?
• "Trouble" is set with a descending tritone
• "Remember me" is set a number of times with a D natural over the descending bass, as though to say that you're remembering the D natural
• After the final cadence is over and we've finished with the text, we get another "remember me"
• "Ahhh" is sort of a moaning cry the way it's set.

• dominance of star singers
• catering to upper-class audience [in London, at least]
• historical/heroic plot subjects
• no comic characters or subplots)

• Handel's main soprano
• Met her in Italy
  • Essentially all of the soprano parts in the Italian cantatas were written for
• Brought her to England when he went there
  • She was the main soprano for the operas and oratorios

•  
  • Bach had a series of church jobs all over Germany
  • Moved to Leipzig to run the music for all local churches in 1723
    • Third choice for this job, actually, and it's the only job he didn't get through political connections
    • Began to compose more vocal music and stuff that he wouldn't have had the instrumental muscle to do with his smaller churches, etc.
      • This is when he wrote many of his great works.
  • Handel, on the other hand, worked for a bunch of nobility, which is more in the older style for composition careers

•  
  •  
    • Born in Halle, Germany
    • Hamburg (1703–1706)
    • Italian period 1706-1710
      
      • Wrote lots of cantatas, and a couple operas and two oratorios
      • England after 1710

• 1705
• Performed in Italy, 1706–1710
• Handel’s first opera
• Mixes Italian and German languages
• Influenced by opera company director Reinhard Keiser, a foremost composer of German Baroque opera

• Immediately pre-Italian period
  • Potentially an audition, of sorts, for his Italian positions

• “mini-operas” for private “academy” performances.
• Sort of operatic in themes
• Generally of the form of two arias, each preceded by a recit; but there are a few that are much longer
• Overwrought musical textures

• 1709
• First “mature” opera
•  Based on a cantata subject that he had used while he was in Naples. This one was for Venice Carnaval
  • Curiously, no borrowings between the two
• Opera seria in three acts

•  
  • Starred Durastanti, duh
    • She also starred in the cantata

• Svegliatevi nel core
  • Sung by Sesto (trouser Soprano), who is assuring his mother that he will avenge her death
  • Turbulent bass-line

• Empio dirò, tu sei
  • Sung by Cesare, who's bitching out Achilla for killing Pompey
  • Agitated bass
    • Monteverdi much?

• Tutto può donna vezzosa
  • Sung by Cleopatra, while she's deceiving Ptolomey
  • Sharp key, deceptive, etc.

• 1660-1725
• influential composer of opera seria
• In the service of the Spanish and Portuguese courts

• Wrote a bunch of keyboard sonatas

•  
  • Rinaldo, 1711
    

•  
  •  
    •  
      • Basically an Italian opera for English tastes
      • Italian style
      • Sort of modeled on the English semi-operas
      • Handel tries to make a name for himself in London
        • E.g. Harpsichord solo in Vo' Far Guerra

• Opera in three acts
• Same year as Giulio Cesare, making this Handel's greatest year of operatic works in England
• Forte e lieto a morte andrei
  • Steady, imitative string texture

• Opera in three acts
• Nothing shocking in any of the arias, to be totally honest

• Opera seria in three acts
• No particularly fun arias to mention, though the parallels to Zauberflote are fun.

• Ariodante (1735)
  • Earthly but mythological love story
  • Opera seria in three acts

• Alcina (1735)
  • Plot taken from Orlando Furioso, as with Orlando and Ariodante
  • Opera seria in three acts

• Serse (1738)

•  
  • Ombra mai fù
    • Pastoral imagery recalls early 17th century opera
    • At the same time, text setting and context within the opera predates and sets the path for Beethoven and most of the German lieder tradition

• The Beggar’s Opera (1728)
  • Libretto by John Gay, music by John Pepusch
  • Popular English-language “ballad opera”
    • English stage opera, fighting against Italian opera
  • public taste begins to turn away from Italian serious opera
  • Composed of a bunch of famous arias strung together with different words.

• Created by Handel in late 1730s
• Superficially similar to the earlier Italian oratorio latino
  • But much larger, grander, ceremonious, and in Englis
  • Essentially the same formal types as opera, but with the addition and great importance of the chorus.
• Famous Handel oratorios
  • Israel in Egypt (1739)
  • Saul (1739)
  • Messiah (1742)
  • Samson (1743)
  • Susanna (1749)
  • Solomon (1749)