Musical Style: an introduction

Musical detectives

Music Grade exams start to include questions related to musical style and period at Grade 5.  At this stage, you may describe the period of the music in quite general terms.  Your teacher will help you to plan your listening around key periods of musical history:

•     medieval
•     baroque
•     classical
•     romantic
•     20th century
•     contemporary
•     jazz

Your job, as a detective of musical history, is to think about the what and the how of what you are hearing.  For example:

What pictures or mood does this music bring to my imagination/

How does the composer make this happen?

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In your detective work, it may be useful to relate the music to a composer you know well:

If is sounds like.............                                                     It's probably............

•     Purcell, Bach, Handel                                Baroque
•     Mozart, Beethoven                                   Classical
•     Chopin, Tchaikovsky                                 Romantic
•     Debussy, Bartók                                        Modern

If it sounds like a piece you have played, think about what that is.  If texture, form and dynamic range are all similar, this is likely to be very helpful in dating the piece.  

Get into the habit of reading the footnotes to your exam pieces, or researching the composer for yourself, so that you develop you music general knowledge and can relate that to what you are playing. 

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At later grades, you will be expected to describe certain dance and rhythmic styles, and relate them to the instrument and period.  By then you should be able to use a variety of features to recognise or "typecast" a piece as being of a particular era. 

You should also be able to contrast the work of particular composers with others from the same period.

You can find more information on these in the pages in this section, but the very best thing you can do is to listen widely and critically and to explore new pieces in your own playing.
     

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Musical Style: the Renaissance

Medieval 476 - 1400

Medieval style

At the start of the era, the notated music is presumed to be monophonic with no instrumental support.
We know that instead of major and minor scales that sound 'normal' to modern, Western ears, medieval music was primarily modal.  The rhythms used in performance are not notated and can really only be guessed at.  In the church, plain chant (also known as Gregorian chant) was most common.
   Alleluia, Angelus Domini, recorded by Dominique Vellard on harmonia mundi HMC905261


Polyphony develops during the later period.  Harmony centres on, at first, consonant intervals of perfect fifths and  octaves, although in later music, perfect fourths will be introduced.  Once rhythmic notation started to happen, songs could be more easily recorded and repeated.
   Miri it is, recorded by the Dufay collective on chandos records CHAN9396
 

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Renaisance 1400 - 1600

Renaissance music gradually came to rely more on consonance than elaborate polyphony, enjoying the concordance of thirds and fifths, and thus carrying music into the tonal era.
Masses and motets were composed for voices in churches and cathedrals.  Of secular song structures the madrigal was prominent, and composers such as Byrd and Dowland in Britain, or Gabrieli and Gesualdo in Italy, generally produced music for both contexts.
Instrumental music was in the structure of a dance suite - often including a basse dance, pavane and galliard - or a consort.

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Musical Style: Romantic

Romantic period 1815 - 1910

Romantic style

The Romantic era established the idea of tonality.  Composers  took the great structural harmonic plans of Bach and Beethoven and added their own chromatic innovations, ranging through key changes like giants in the mountains. 
Chromaticism and dissonance started to be used. Modulations could be effected with a single pivot note rather than pivot chords.

Romantic structure

The Romantic era extended  sonata form, producing huge symphonies. 
But alongside this, there was an explosion in the composition of songs and songs without words.  Field and Chopin wrote many nocturnes for piano.  Many piano works also had narrative or pictorial structures, such as Liszt's "Années de pélérinage" or Grieg's Lyric pieces.  Composers such as Dvorak, Mahler and Arensky also became aware of their own national styles and brought folk songs and dances into 'art' music in new ways.  This was arguably the golden age for expressive pianistic writing, seen in the work of Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Grieg.       
The Romantic period also saw the rise of the virtuoso solo performer.  Liszt (above), in addition to his skills as a composer, was also a flamboyant and dazzling pianist and consummate showman.  

Romantic instruments

One of the most important features of the 18th century was the development of the piano from a wooden-framed instrument with leather-covered hammers to an instrument with an iron frame and felt-covered hammers much like the upright and grand pianos of today. The greater strength of the frame allowed for longer, thicker strings and as a result, a much warmer and richer sound.

Musical Style: Modern

Twentieth century music 1900 - 2000

2oth century style

• Extremely diverse
• Explorations of modality and the pentatonic scale
• Expressionism
• Minimalism
• Atonality and serialism
• Still a great deal of tonal, neo-romantic music being written - examples being Kabalevsky, Shostakovitch, Elgar

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2oth century structures

Tone poems and descriptive pieces
Expressionist work
Modernist and minimalist
Dissonance and atonality

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2oth century instruments

the prepared piano
Invention of the synthesiser in 1960s
MIDI sequencers used increasingly from 1990s

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2oth century composers

• George Gershwin
• Arnold Schoenberg
• Alban Berg
• Ygor Stravinsky
• Claude Debussy
• Maurice Ravel
• Bela Bartók
• George Gershwin
• John Cage
• Philip Glass

     

A musical timeline

Musical Timeline

The history and context of music making and musicians from 1650 to the 21st century.

Each of the pages below will print out to produce two A4 landscape pages which can be displayed together as a music timeline.

The list letters refer to Trinity Guildhall and ABRSM exam board syllabi, where for the most part pieces need to be chosen from the Baroque and early Classical era(List A), the Late Classical and Romantic period (List B) and Modern (List C).

The Music Timeline forms the backbone of the piano4t Performance/ Exam Master Class.  The Master Class will have its next run at the studio  in Spring 2014.  Click here for the short programme.

Musical Style: Classical

Classical period  1730 - 1820

Structural clarity was sought in all fields of art, and in music this meant moving away from Baroque polyphony and towards melody with harmony.  As the musical technology advanced, musicians could play in more varied ensembles.  The size of the orchestra steadily grew, as did the range of sounds and effects composers could demand from their players.  Instrumental soloists such as violinists and pianists became more and more virtuosic performers.

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Social factors

The economics of music changed, too.  Composers wrote for patrons and used local musicians known to the families concerned.  Parts for this type of music making had to become simpler - with occasional pieces for virtuosi on particular instruments.  Music could be copied and circulated more easily throughout Europe, feeding the growing cult of composer celebrities.

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Notation

Melody lines were notated in increasing detail with phrasing and dynamics.  Gradually the signs used became standardised, although manuscripts from individual composers are still recognisable to experts.
Movements were unified with distinctive moods and rhythms or tempo.
The Baroque habit of making each movement devoted to a single "affect" or emotion faded away. Form as we know it was born - with contrasts between sections, managed with key changes, stridently rhythmic themes next to lyrical ones...

Earlier keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord and clavichord gave way to the fortepiano or 'square piano', which while offering much lesser volume and power than pianos today, nevertheless offered composers something entirely new - the ability to change the sounds produced with touch alone.  The sustain pedal brought still greater ranges of colour to the palette of the composer and performer.

Try to play a movement from a sonata by one of these great classical composers for the piano:

•     Clementi
•     Haydn
•     Mozart
•     Beethoven - possibly Farewell to the piano or Sonatina in G
•     Schubert - possibly a transcription of Standchen or his Sonata for the Young
•     Czerny, Diabelli and Kuhlau are less well known but have great things to offer at grade 3 level and beyond

Musical Style: the Baroque

Baroque 1600 - 1760 Baroque music uses and perfects the art of counterpoint.  In the Renaissance, harmony happened as a side effect of polyphony.  In early Baroque music we start to hear chord progressions, a bass line, and more of a sense of all the voices working together to produce direction and structure.  Baroque style Baroque music uses more sustained themes and stronger rhythms. Baroque structure Instead of the ricercar, fantasia and canzona of the Renaissance it is the fugue that defines Baroque structure. Baroque music has more emotional intensity than Renaissance music, and a Baroque piece often depicts a single emotion or affect (such as joy, grief, or piety...). This period also sees a growing amount of music written for virtuoso singers and instrumentalists, so is harder to perform than Renaissance music.  There is more ornamentation, often improvised. Baroque instruments Instrumental pieces gradually became more important than a capella vocal music.  The harpsichord and the organ were the important keyboard instruments of the time.While much music was produced for church and court, the leisured classes also gathered to make music socially. A Baroque English organ is played here:  A harpsichord is heard in this clip:  Here, Vladimir Horowitz, using all the tone colour of the piano, plays Domenico Scarlatti's Sonata in E K532:  Try to play a piece from one of these Baroque composers:    Couperin     Vivaldi     Bach     Handel     Telemann     Purcell     Domenico Scarlatti