Evolution of Vocal Music: From Antiquity to Romanticism

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 in Music

Greece: The Origin of Western Music

The first ideas about music were not born in the Middle Ages, but earlier, in Greece. Without them, it is inconceivable to produce the first 1500 years of music history.

Like other art forms, music comes together in its beginnings to religion and the service of mankind.

The Greeks left us a whole complex musical theory, melodic principles with the writings of Pythagoras and Aristoxenus, and an interpretation of music as a phenomenon linked to human beings, their lives, and their souls.

Pythagoras is the first great student of music, who gives the West a vision in which everything is a number, and the number is expressed in music. This is already a guiding principle of medieval thought which puts music between science Quadrivium, along with geometry, arithmetic, and astrology. It is present in the writings of Boethius and St. Augustine and throughout medieval Europe.

But Greece does more than the Pythagorean thought. The object of music cannot be mere entertainment, but a harmonious education, improvement of the soul and the citizen. With that, we are defining the essence of medieval thinking about music and, ultimately, the first music that is medieval: Gregorian chant.

Birth of Western Vocal Music: The Middle Ages

In the history of culture, the early years of Western music is that long period beginning from the fourth century and reaching the 14th, whose last centuries filled the Romanesque and Gothic. In this important period for the Western world, there is a series of different and disparate musical phenomena such as the Gregorian, the onset of secular music, and the birth and development of the first polyphonic style, all defined by being vocal. Of these, one had particular significance: the Gregorian.

Gregorian Chant

Gregorian chant is the result of the confluence of Greco-Roman and Jewish music since Christianity emerges from these three cultures.

It has a number of formal elements which differentiate it from today’s music:

  • It uses eight different scales from our present ones, which are responsible for our modern ears sounding like a very different way. We call these scales modes.
  • Its rhythm is free, a wavy line, lightweight, highly flexible, and avoids what can be exciting.
  • It is monodic a capella, i.e., with one voice, without the accompaniment of instruments.
  • It is sung in Latin.
  • It uses three systems as the number of notes per syllable: syllabic, with a note for each syllable; pneumatic or decorated, with two or three notes per syllable; and florid or melismatic, very ornate, with more than three notes per syllable.

The Gregorian is serious music, balanced, religious art concentrate. Thus, it is music that aims to align the believer’s soul to God, which goes to the top of the web and is the product of a religious society convinced that humans live for God and for eternity.

Early Vocal Paraliturgical Music

In the late ninth century, its internal crisis begins, mainly by the collapse of the sacred music concept, which coincides with the beginning of the secularization of life and increased civil and profane music.

Medieval Secular Music

The birth of secular music is determined by the beginning of an emerging cash economy and the beginning of the vernacular.

Troubadour, Trouvère, and Minnesänger

Musicians and poets who sing about all human feelings and, above all, a key theme: love. In them, the music of the church goes to court or the castle and will flower, especially in the major trade routes or warriors, as the Camino de Santiago, Rome, or the Crusades.

The difference between troubadour, trouvère, and Minnesänger is simple:

  • The troubadour sings in the French patois “Oc.”
  • The trouvère in the “Oil.”
  • The Minnesänger in German, but the theme of their songs is very similar: love, war, nature.

Qualities of this music:

  • Rhythm is more pronounced and more varied than the Gregorian.
  • They are accompanied by musical instruments such as violas, harps, lutes, and percussion instruments to set the pace.

The Cantigas of Alfonso X El Sabio

Spain produces at this time a very specific musical art, as exemplified by the work of King Alfonso X, the Cantigas de Santa Maria.

This book compiles 417 melodies of very different kinds: tunes from the troubadours of Provence, old Spanish ballads, and songs clearly influenced by Arab and Jewish. The Cantigas brings together the various types of musical expression in Europe: French music styles, Castilian, Galician, Portuguese, Jewish, and Arabic. Importantly, the king himself spoke in the first person, implying that he himself is a composer of some songs.

Within the Spanish music of the moment, we must remember the Cantigas de Amigo, the minstrel of Vigo, Martin Codax, of enormous beauty, which, as the Cantigas, were written in Galician.

Polyphony

Vocal music evolves substantially when human beings discover polyphony. As the word indicates, it is the song to many (poly) voices (phones) that sound simultaneously, and that begins to exist around the ninth century. Subsequently, all these forms are for three voices and more.

The works that we know are kept in the so-called School of Paris and Santiago de Compostela, with its Calixtinus Codex.

Within the School of Paris, there are two musicians of great relevance, Leoninus and Perotinus.

The Ars Nova

A very revolutionary period in music. The name comes from a book by the Frenchman Philippe de Vitry, entitled Ars Nova.

Its chief representative is the French composer Guillaume de Machaut. He is the most important musician of this era, who composes a landmark work in the field of religion, the Mass of Notre Dame.

In Spain, we have a book that summarizes our contributions, the Livre Vermell of Montserrat.

With the birth of polyphonic singing, it evolved substantially.

The Song: Vocal Expression

The human voice is a wind instrument consisting of a power source, the lungs; an oscillator, the vocal cords; and a resonator, composed in turn by the larynx, pharynx, and mouth.

Types of Voices

We distinguish six types of voice from the highest to the lowest: three female – soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto – and three male – tenor, baritone, and bass.

In general, a voice has a range of two octaves, i.e., from the lowest to the highest you can give is a distance of two octaves.

Women’s Voices

Soprano: The sharpest human voice. We distinguish several types: dramatic soprano, the most serious among the sopranos; lyric soprano, more expressive timbre, clear and pleasant; coloratura soprano, with great agility and penetrating timbre.

Mezzo-Soprano: The middle voice of women.

Contralto: The lower voice of women.

Men’s Voices

Tenor: The male voice is sharper. We distinguish several types: heroic tenor, combining agility, brilliance, and power; lyric tenor, with a tone more expressive, clear and pleasant; buffo tenor.

Baritone: Voice midway between tenor and bass.

Bass: It is the deepest voice of man. Under a strong voice, serious and solemn. Bass singer with more lyrical ability. Basso buffo, with more ability and power for the comic.

In addition to these voices, we often hear talk about the countertenor voice. It’s a male voice sharper than the tenor, entering the field of the female contralto voice.

Vocal Training

We can distinguish the following configurations:

Choir: A group of singers who perform music of many voices, in which each voice is represented by several components. The prototype is a division of voices: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Choral Society: What is a mixed choir larger, since then more than 100 components.

Chamber Choir: It’s a smaller chorus, generally no more than 20 voices.

Chorus of White Voices: We refer to a chorus of voices comprised solely of children or women.

Vocal Music in the Renaissance

The Renaissance is one of the great periods of world culture.

Music was especially appreciated by the civil and political class of the Renaissance. Restore Platonic thought that music improves a person. Consequently, the musician begins to be valued and live better. Therefore, the great Renaissance music lives.

The music of the Renaissance can be divided into secular and religious music, instrumental and vocal.

  • Religious vocal music: Motet and Mass
  • Secular vocal music: Madrigal

Vocal Music in the Italian Renaissance

The Madrigal

The madrigal is the most important music of the Renaissance, the ultimate symbol of secular music.

The madrigal is a polyphonic musical form of descriptive character, aims, through the union of words and music, to express the feelings of man as a layman.

Usually, it has four or five voices a capella but can also have accompaniment.

The music attempts to make sense of the lyrics sung, sometimes even onomatopoeia.

Periods

One of the most outstanding musicians of all time is Claudio Monteverdi, music that gives way to the Renaissance and Baroque. He composed no fewer than eight books of madrigals and, from the fifth, his music is clearly Baroque.

Spain and France

Our Renaissance music is determined, as most of our activities in this period. Cristobal de Morales, Francisco Guerrero, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Antonio de Cabezon.

Vocal music more characteristically Hispanic of the period is not so much in religious music in which Spain is fully international language, but in secular music, and is expressed through three most important forms: the romance, villancico, and ensalada.

  • Romance: A polyphonic form on the theme of old Spanish ballads, composed of four musical phrases that correspond to the four verses of the first stanza. ABAD / ABAD.

  • Villancico: Musical form, also from popular profane, which has three parts: chorus, verse, and chorus. Juan del Encina is the most prominent composer and kept Palace The songbook. Until later, villancico will not become a Christmas song.

  • Ensalada: Polyphonic secular gender in that mix different styles of the madrigal, a popular song, villancico, romance, and dance, i.e., a bit of everything, so-called ensalada.

The genus is specifically French chanson. This music is like ours, very chordal, glued to the text and strong rhythmic characteristics.

Vocal Music in the Baroque

Baroque Man lives a time of crisis, both economically and spiritually, due to a major economic recession and the drama that involves the dismemberment of the Church into Protestant and Catholic.

Through the sound of giving meaning is equally dramatic, with the following:

  • With concertato style, or the contrast between sound levels, i.e., a kind of struggle that develops between the orchestra (tutti), soloists (violin), and the soloist (solo)
  • The contrast of the different timbres of the orchestra
  • With the juxtaposition of fast and slow movements
  • Intensifying the emotional power of words to what we call style recitative, aria, and airy.

Remember the qualities of this music:

  • Imposing the harmonic system, i.e., the tendency vertical, not horizontal, as in the Renaissance.
  • Looking for a varied pace very marked, called mechanical rhythm

The voices have a different importance, there is a major, and the others served with harmonic accompaniment, this is called accompanied monody, and the accompaniment is performed by the bass.

The Polychoral

One of the inventions that make substantial progress from singing. These relate not four or five voices, but up to twelve or more. This technique is transferred to the orchestra during the Baroque.

  • Extends the scope of the human voice, the ability to use sounds higher and lower, and thus enrich the color.
  • The use of contrasts and echoes voices as backing vocals are different and respond to one another.
  • The wealth of dynamic, i.e., the ability to play with the intensity of the human voice, the piano-heavy game.

The Italian musician Giovanni Gabrieli, Monteverdi himself later, experienced in this line of creation, and the church of San Marco in Venice is the great place where it occurs.

In Germany, especially the personality of Heinrich Schütz.

Secular and Religious Vocal Forms

We can distinguish between secular and religious:

  • Opera
  • Cantata
  • Oratorio
  • Passion

The Cantata

It is a musical form, composed on a text secular or religious in nature involving lyrical solos, orchestra, and choirs, and composed and recited aria.

Unlike oratorio and opera, the cantata is not sung a story.

Born with the beginning of the Baroque madrigal already attached to the song. Their qualities are:

  • Lyrical
  • Consists of a succession of recitatives and ariosos

The profane cantata originated, but is immediately accepted by the church, especially in Germany, and is particularly important in the Protestant world of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Oratorio

A form of Baroque vocal music, of a narrative, without a stage performance.

It sings a religious drama about the Old or New Testament, where the characters do not act, just sing (the difference with the opera).

The oratory reached its peak with George Frideric Handel.

Passion

It is a gigantic cantata to celebrate the central dogma of Christianity, which is the passion and death of Christ.

It’s like a Greek tragedy, which continues and is inspired by the gospel. The characters of the Passion are: An evangelist who narrates, themselves quoting the gospel and the German people involved in this drama, expressing your feelings about what is happening and is told, this is a very important part of the Passion.

Another great personality of the last German Baroque composer of passion was Georg Philipp Telemann.

Vocal Music in Classicism and Romanticism

Classicism and Romanticism are two periods to fill the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century. There are many things that unite them:

  • Respect for the melody
  • Using the same melodic structures
  • The assessment of instrumental music.

Vocal music will take over this long period a large presence throughout the opera, however, some vocal forms arise: lied, or choral requiem.

The Lied: Origins (German Song)

A composition of short dimensions, which we use music to a poem, thus achieving unity between music and poetry.

Externally we can formulate a very general way, a series of characteristics lied:

  • Simple Melody
  • Harmony Elementary
  • Balanced and symmetrical phrases

The lied is a musical form as old as humans. The precedents are distant from the troubadour lied, the Minnesänger, the proper madrigal, and chanson. Its history begins in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in the Classic. A little later there is a clear change with the arrival of a basic literary figure, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was interested in the lied. His poems were thereafter the large fountain.

Lied fashion spread throughout southern Germany and Vienna.

The Romantic Lied

Romanticism is the great period of lied.

Reasons:

  • The new romantic interest for the expression of the primitive.
  • For the popular song
  • For poetry linked to the national feelings of the people
  • It is a genre that is grown in the romantic room

The lied is fairly free, but you can distinguish three most used modalities, such as:

  • With the same music and the AAA scheme. When making small changes to the accompaniment or melody is written AA’-A”
  • The three stanzas lied, this musical pattern: ABA, in which the first and last stanza have the same music
  • The traditional form of rondo, with the scheme: ABACA

Composers of Lied

Include:

Franz Schubert: He composed over 600 lieder, sometimes grouping in collections

Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Although this music gives little success in life, it is precisely his lieder one of the most important contributions of Schubert. The defining element of his lieder are:

  • Ability to draw literary images with music.
  • Wide melodic richness.

After Schubert, Robert Schumann is the most prominent farmer of this style. There are some differences between the lieder of Schumann and Schubert, in the accompaniment and melodic inspiration.

The final chapter was written lied Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf. The first produces 260 lieder, related to Schumann by his sentimentality. However, Brahms is closer to popular music, it takes many topics in this, they give their songs a picturesque feature. Among its highlights cycles of Magelone Romances.

The Lied of Gustav Mahler

The last chapter of the romantic lied was written by Gustav Mahler. The peculiarity of this composer is that he sought all his life the synthesis of these two genera considered irreconcilable, the symphony and lied.

Peculiarities:

  • His lieder are for voice and orchestra, piano, which was the instrument of lied
  • Its harmony is rich and full of emotion
  • Wealth is enormous orchestral accompaniment
  • All his lieder are loaded with strong pessimism in their texts.

Choral Music

Choral singing, which had achieved great development in Europe in the Renaissance, waned in the Baroque but remained coral practice in various areas of Protestant countries.

From the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century in Europe come early choirs from a non-professional. Factors that influence the development of this phenomenon are:

  • The spirit of the French Revolution, often embodied in hymns and songs collectively.
  • The labor movement, which uses choral music as entertainment and educational way
  • The romantic taste for the expression of national sentiment
  • Increasing access of all social classes to music since the French Revolution.

The Religious Choral Music

With the advent of Romanticism, there is a restoration of the religious movement, driven by three major writers such as Chateaubriand. Their taste for the romantic look back led them to discover the greatness of Christian culture and, consequently, great music exemplified by Palestrina and others. This results in the restoration of Catholicism and religious music.

There was a movement called Cecilian, which again inspired by models of Renaissance polyphony and makes music very similar to those of Palestrina, and others.

This restoration of religious values resulted in:

  • The rediscovery of the music of the past, such as Johann Sebastian Bach, rediscovered by Mendelssohn.
  • The imitation of musical models of antiquity.
  • Restoring linked music to singing and, especially, certain forms such as the oratorio and requiem.

Mass and Requiem

A special place is occupied by such a requiem mass, which is the Mass dedicated to the dead.

Key Ideas

  • The Greeks conceived of music as a song and therefore always linked to the word
  • The church inherits this concept and creates its own music, that is the Gregorian conceived as part of the sentence.
  • Man began to sing their concerns through the minstrels, troubadours, and Minnesänger.
  • The song suffers a big change with the invention of polyphony, and experimentation involving the use of voice as an artistic
  • The motet is the first large genus polifonico
  • In the human voice can distinguish six different voice types: bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, mezzo-soprano, and soprano
  • The madrigal is the greatest form of Renaissance secular vocal music, sung in the human concerns and passions of men of the Renaissance
  • The Baroque has three major religious vocal forms: the cantata, oratorio, and passion.
  • The music sung by the excellence of Romanticism is the meaning in German lied, and the main authors are: Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler.
  • During the romance becomes popular choral music throughout Europe. This music is coming to town.
  • The religious vocal music during the Romantic is recovered through the restoration of genres such as oratory, or the requiem mass.