Vocal Chamber Music

Author : Richard Edward Kolb
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (654 download)

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Download or read book Style in Mid-Seventeenth Century Roman Vocal Chamber Music: The Works of Antonio Francesco Tenaglia (c. 1615-1672/3) written by Richard Edward Kolb and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman vocal chamber music of the middle decades of the seventeenth century constitutes one of the largest repertoires of the Baroque period, one which is also among the least studied. Just as the polyphonic madrigal served during the sixteenth century as the ideal medium for developing new ideas with far-reaching consequences, mid-seventeenth century Roman vocal chamber music was a proving ground for developments of lasting importance in melodic style, formal structure, and the establishment of functional tonality. Scholarly interest in this repertoire has begun to gather momentum during recent decades, but there has been relatively little study of the elements of musical language which characterize the repertoire as a whole, and as they differentiate the individual styles of each composer. This study develops a model for analyzing mid-seventeenth century vocal chamber music that takes into account features of melodic style, text-music relationship, and tonal language. Part I presents an overview of the historical context, production, reception, sources, and musical language of vocal chamber music in mid-seventeenth century Rome. This provides a frame of reference for detailed analyses of nine representative works by Antonio Francesco Tenaglia (c. 1615-1672/3) in Part II. While the works of any of the principal Roman composers of the period might have served the primary goal of developing an approach to studying the repertoire, focus on a single composer provides the scope for delineating features of individual style with greatest clarity. Tenaglia is an ideal choice because many features of his melodic and rhythmic style are particularly distinctive, and because his surviving output maintains a consistently high standard of musical inspiration and craftsmanship. Features of Tenaglia's style are compared with those of other composers, especially Giacomo Carissimi. From these comparisons emerges a secondary theme of opening the way to an appreciatiation of a little recognized composer, whose skill and imagination consistently matches, and sometimes surpasses that of the most famous composers of the age. This study concludes with an exercise in musicological detective work, using the profile of Tenaglia's style which emerges from the analyses to evaluate the probability of his authorship of five pieces of uncertain ascription.