Vocal Music Book

• Vocal music


  One of the best tools for expressing one's feelings
• Vocal music became more evident


  Romantic Period
• Romanticism


  • Coincided with the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe
  • Brought about the rise of socialism and capitalism
  • Basic quality is emotional subjectivity
• Romantic composers

  • Explore feelings of grandiosity, intimacy, unpredictability, sadness, rapture, and longing
• Romantic vocal forms

  • Art song and operas
  • About fantasy, supernatural, romance, and the nature as mirror of the human heart
• Parallelisms of music and literature

  Clearly evident in almost all forms of vocal music during the Romantic Period
• Composers

  Interpret poems, mood, atmosphere and imagery into music
• Art song


  • Written for solo voice and piano
  • Inspiration from poetry
  • Mood set at the beginning with piano introduction and concluded with a piano postlude
• Romantic artists

  • Found inspiration in landscapes
  • Subjects were traditional myths, legends, and folklore that usually deal with the supernatural, grotesque, and less ordinary
• Romantic vocal music


  • Require singers to perform a greater range of tone color, dynamics, and pitch
• Opera


  • An important source of musical expressions
  • The birth of the opera houses came
  • Place where all the arts converged: music, poetry, painting, architecture, and the dance
• Lieder


  • The proper name for Franz Schubert's songs
  • Schubert developed them to have a powerful dramatic impact on the listeners
  • He tapped the poetry of writers like Johann Goethe
• Franz Schubert was born

  1797
• Franz Schubert died

  1828
• Schubert's famous vocal music works/lieder

  • "Gretchen am Spinnrade", "Erlkonig", "Ellens Gesang III" ("Ave Maria"), and "Schwanenge Sang" ("Swan Song")
• Schubert's other works


  • Piano pieces, string quartets, operetta and the Symphony no. 8 in B Minor ("Unfinished Symphony")
• Verdi


  • A name associated with Romantic opera
  • His characters are ordinary people and not those of the royal family like those found in German operas
  • He insisted on a good libreta and wrote operas with political overtones and for middle-clam audience
• Verdi was born

  1813
• Verdi died

  1901
• Verdi's operas


  • Serious love story with unhappy ending
  • Expressive vocal melody is the soul of a Verdi opera
  • He completed 25 operas throughout his career
  • His famous operas are "La Traviata, "Rigoletto," "Falstaff," "Otello," and "Aida"
• Puccini


  • Belonged to a group of composers who stressed realism
  • Drew material from everyday life, rejecting heroic themes from mythology and history
  • His famous operas were: "La Boheme," "Tosca," "Madame Butterfly," and "Turandot"
• Puccini was born

  1858
• Wagner


  • Introduced new ideas in harmony and in form, including extremes of chromaticism
  • Explored the limits of the traditional tonal system
  • Developed a compositional style in which the orchestra has of equal importance in dramatic roles as the singers themselves
  • Used leitmotifs or musical sequences standing for a particular character/plot element
• Wagner was born

  1813
• Wagner died

  1883
• Wagner's famous works


  • "Tristan and Isolde", "Die Walkyrie," "Die Meistersinger," "Tannhäuser," and "Parsifal"
• Bizet

  • Became famous for his operas
  • His most famous opera is "Carmen"
  • When "Carmen" first opened in Paris, the reviews were terrible
  • Four months after Bizet's death, "Carmen" opened in Vienna and was a smash hit
• Bizet was born

  1838
• Bizet died

  1875
• Libretto


  • The text of an opera
  • Librettist and the composer work closely together to tell the story
• Score


  • The book that the composer and librettist put together
  • Contains all the musical notes, words, and ideas to help the performers tell the story
  • Often, there are operas with overtures, preludes, prologues, several acts, finales, and postludes
• Recitative


  The declamatory singing, used in the prose parts and dialogue of opera
• Voice types in opera

  • Soprano
  • Mezzo-Soprano
  • Contralto
  • Tenor
  • Baritone
  • Bass
• Aria


  • An air or solo singing part sung by a principal character
  • A beautiful aria can bring an audience to its feet and decide the fate of an entire opera
• Musical terms used in vocal music

  • A Capella
  • Cantabile
  • Capo
  • Coda
  • Dolce
  • Falsetto
  • Glissando
  • Passagio
  • Rubato
  • Tessitura
  • Vibrato
• Bel canto


  Beautiful singing
• Chromaticism


  The use of notes foreign to the mode or diatonic scale upon which composition is based
• Coloratura


  A type of operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps
• Leitmotifs


  Musical sequences standing for a particular character/plot element
• Libretto


  The book or story of the opera