Music History and Literature
Music History and Literature covers chronology, genre, composer, and style from plainchant to the present, including American vernacular and non-Western traditions. Items ask you to place a described work in a period, name its genre, or identify the composer from stylistic fingerprints.
Chronology and style markers
- Medieval (to about 1400): plainchant, organum, Ars nova, modal polyphony; Hildegard von Bingen, Léonin, Pérotin, Machaut.
- Renaissance (about 1400–1600): imitative polyphony, smooth dissonance treatment, word painting, printing; Josquin, Palestrina, Byrd, Weelkes; mass, motet, madrigal, chanson.
- Baroque (1600–1750): basso continuo and figured bass, monody and opera, ritornello, fugue, terraced dynamics, da capo aria; Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel.
- Classical (1750–1820): sonata form, symphony, string quartet, periodic phrasing; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
- Romantic (1820–1900): expanded chromatic harmony, lieder, program music, leitmotif, nationalism; Schubert, Chopin, Berlioz, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák.
- Twentieth century and after: Impressionism (Debussy), primitivism (Stravinsky), twelve-tone and serial method (Schoenberg, Webern, Berg), neoclassicism, minimalism, aleatory; jazz and American song.
Non-Western and American traditions
Gamelan (Indonesia), raga and tala (India), maqam (Middle East), West African polyrhythm, taiko, mariachi, blues (12-bar form, blue notes), spirituals, gospel, and jazz (swing, improvisation, rhythm-section roles).
Worked example
A work for solo soprano and continuo is built on a da capo aria, with a string ritornello framing the vocal phrases and a text about a shepherd. Reasoning: solo voice with continuo signals the Baroque monodic tradition; da capo form is a Baroque aria convention; the recurring instrumental ritornello is the concerto principle applied to vocal music. The combination points to a Baroque cantata or opera, not a Renaissance motet (sacred Latin, no continuo) or a Classical aria (orchestral, sonata-influenced).
Traps that cost marks
- Shifting date boundaries, such as placing Bach in the Classical era.
- Confusing motet (sacred, Latin) with madrigal (secular, vernacular).
- Assuming Renaissance music is homophonic; it is predominantly imitative polyphony.
- Attributing works to the wrong composer, for example assigning the Brandenburg Concertos to Handel.
- Equating all twentieth-century music with atonality, or all program music with the Romantic era only.