Page 95 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Listening Cue
Barbara Strozzi, L’amante segreto (1651), “Voglio morire,” Part 1 Download 16
Genre: Monody
Texture: Homophonic
what to listen for: The basso continuo of cello and harpsichord introduces the voice. The bass repeats continually, thereby forming a basso ostinato.
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. listen to . . . this selection streaming online.
watch . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. do . . . Listening Exercise 5.1, Strozzi, “Voglio morire,” online.
Early Baroque Opera
Given the popularity of opera today—and the fact that opera has existed in China and Japan since the thirteenth century—it is surprising that this genre of music emerged comparatively late in the history of Western European culture. Not until around 1600 did opera appear in Europe, and its native soil was Italy.
An opera, most basically, is a stage play (a drama) expressed through mu- sic. The term opera means literally “a work,” and it first appeared in the Italian phrase opera drammatica in musica, “a dramatic work set to music.” Opera de- mands singers who can act or, in some cases, actors who can sing. Indeed, in opera every word of the text (called the libretto) is sung. Such a requirement might strike us as unnatural. After all, we don’t usually sing to our roommate, “Get out of the bathroom, I need to get to class this morning.” But in opera, what we lose in credibility, we more than recoup in expressive power. Set to music, the text of a song, whether a pop hit or an opera aria, gains emotional force. Find a good drama, add music to the words, call the audience to attention with a stir- ring instrumental piece (an overture), throw in a chorus and some instrumental mood music, and you’ve got a new medium: opera. This is how, in effect, the new genre of opera began. Ironically, its inventors thought they were resurrect- ing something old—ancient Greek drama.
The origins of opera can be traced to late sixteenth-century Italy. The genre was developed in the cities of Florence, Mantua, and Venice (Figure 5.8) by pro- gressive musicians and intellectuals who continued to pursue humanist ide- als—they sought to re-create the emotive powers of classical Greek theater. They aimed to do so, however, with modern musical means: employing expressive solo song (monody) rather than the old-fashioned choral polyphony of the Re- naissance. Among these pioneering musicians were Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520– 1591), a noted music theorist and the father of the famous astronomer Galileo
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