peter schubert

In the Istitutioni harmoniche, Zarlino describes a compositional process in which a countermelody that is introduced against a principal soggetto can itself become a soggetto for the next phrase, and the process can be repeated in subsequent phrases. This study shows how comporre di fantasia functions in passages from Martini, Févin, Isaac, and Josquin. The technique can also inform our understanding of canon composition, which is illustrated with two examples by Pierre de la Rue. For the study of canons at different time intervals, I also invoke the neglected theories of Robert Morris, Robert Gauldin, and Immanuel Ott. Comporre di fantasia is a structural category that provides insight into compositional process in Renaissance polyphony.

In this paper I begin by listing the improvised contrapuntal techniques that are found in various Renaissance treatises. Many are explicitly intended for boys singing in the liturgy, but some (those found in Lusitano and Sancta Maria) are clearly intended for the keyboard. During the conference I have demonstrated some of these techniques with the help of volunteers from the audience. Many of the techniques are identical whether sung or played (adding a repeating motive to a CF, adding two lines in parallel tenths to a CF, and stretto fuga, for instance). The problem that faces us is lack of evidence as to whether and how these techniques were transferred. Did students learn to sing first? To play? I will focus on contrapunto fugato and stretto fuga, and show some differences between keyboard and vocal improvisation.

The authors report on experiments they have run using the computer to search a small corpus of Renaissance pieces (the famous Lassus duos of 1577)  for recurring contrapuntal combinations. They liken these combinations (or ‘modules’ as Jessie Ann Owens has called them) to words in a text, and the process of finding them, to work done by linguists such as John Sinclair on large corpora of text. The program used was devised by a team at McGill University as part of the ELVIS (‘Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions’) project. The interval successions are identified by the vertical intervals and the melodic motions that connect them, in the manner of Tinctoris’s counterpoint treatise (1477), which illustrates most of the possible ways two vertical intervals can be connected. The authors find that some short interval successions appear, as we would expect, in repetitions of thematic material (i.e. as parts of soggetti associated with specific text phrases). Others, however, occur in apparently run-of-the-mill counterpoint: in the middle of words, in the middle of melismas, across phrase boundaries and embellished in a variety of ways. These often exhibit surprising consistency as to semitone position and possible modal associations.

Background in Music Technology The use of a MIDI-audio alignment algorithm to identify notes onsets and offsets and a fundamental frequency estimation algorithm to extract frequency information allows for intonation-related information to be extracted automatically from recordings of the singing voice. This expedites the extraction of performance data from the recordings compared to manual methods, allowing for a larger number of performances to be analysed.

Background in Music Technology The use of a MIDI-audio alignment algorithm to identify notes onsets and offsets and a fundamental frequency estimation algorithm to extract frequency information allows for intonation-related information to be extracted automatically from recordings of the singing voice. This expedites the extraction of performance data from the recordings compared to manual methods, allowing for a larger number of performances to be analysed.

This study applies Kofi Agawu's proposed method for analyzing texted music (1992), in which the music and the text are analyzed separately before they are considered together, to an early madrigal by Willaert. Focusing primarily on counterpoint, I offer a detailed study of Willaert's complex compositional technique. I show that he responded to the poem in many ways, but at the same time he made many purely musical decisions. Finally, I consider what his motivations for these decisions might have been and enumerate musical means he used to respond to the different aspects of his text.

... 1968) ch. 18; Illuminato Aiguino: II tesoro illuminato di tutti i tuoni di canto figurato (Venice, 1581) Bk. I, ch. 42 and Bk. II, chs. 29-30; and Scipione Cerreto: Della prattica musicale (Naples, 16o01) pp. 248-50. 24 Ibid., p. 258. This example was added for the translation. Page 8. 10 ...

THE FOURTEEN-MODE SYSTEM OF ILLUMINATO AIGUINO Peter N. Schubert ... Page 3. Practically nothing is known of Aiguino's life.2 His work, the cul-mination of an Italian tradition begun byMarchetto, is motivated by piety and regulated by the precepts of Scholasticism. ...

The compositional process behind the iconic Tallis forty-part motet, Spem in alium (ca. 1570) remains an enigma. Did he really check every pair of voices for illegal parallels? The author proposes a scenario based on Thomas Campion’s “Rule” for connecting notes in three voices above a bass. This very clever system ensures the presence of all three interval-classes above the bass (third, fifth, and root), and makes parallels impossible. The treatise was widely reprinted, and it is likely that the system was known well before its appearance around 1614. Any composer who knew this system could have grouped the melodic motions above the bass in such a way as to make the task of writing in so many parts more manageable. Campion believed that the bass was the principal melodic voice, and glimpses into the disposition of the soggetti in Tallis’s motet reveal that the bass is indeed the soggetto in the thick-textured sections.

Pervasive imitation became the dominant musical texture in sacred music of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 1 In pervasive imitation all of the voices are involved in repeating the same melodic material, and many or all of the phrases in the work begin with imitation. We will take a look at imitation in the early fifteenth century, and then focus on how pervasive imitation developed from the mid-to the late fifteenth century. Most of our examples are motets, since their position in the middle of the genre hierarchy, between chansons and masses, makes them resemble both, as Cumming has shown. 2 We will show how some patterns arise out of improvised practices, and tally imi-tative patterns in the section openings of the first five Petrucci motet prints, considering the contrapuntal constraints of imitative textures, with respect to both time and pitch intervals of imitation. Our conclusions reveal a surprising consistency of techniques in the late fifteenth century, and clear differences from imitation as used both earlier and later. This snapshot of an emerging musical style is of particular interest because this was a period when the aesthetic aims of variety and complexity were giving way to those of intelligi-bility and accessibility. 3 Imitative music is different from free counterpoint in that the consequent voice has to do what the lead voice did some time interval earlier, and the lead voice, if it continues, has to accommodate the consequent voice (i.e., follow the rules of counterpoint). In looking for patterns of imitation, the elements that we must consider are the pitch interval of imitation between voices, the time interval of imitation between voices, and the continuation of the lead voice (whether or not this continuation is repeated in the second voice). While some Uses of Imitation, " 269: he comments that in the early sixteenth century " consistency and simplicity of musical means were now preferred over complexity and variety. " [200]

This study compared the influence of musical texture (homophony versus contrapuntal writing), conditions of preparation (sight-reading versus prepared), interpretative goals, and level of competence (results in organ performance competitions) on the type and number of errors that are committed in organ performance. In the sight-reading condition, eight professional organists recorded different interpretations of two short Baroque organ pieces of contrasting

... 1. Joel Lester, “Heightening Levels of Activity and JS Bach's Parallel-Section Construc - tions,” this Journal 54 (2001): 89. ... 4) in Lewis Lockwood, Noel O'Regan, and Jessie Ann Owens, “Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ...

Marenzio's motet "Sepelierunt Stephanum" opens with a full-textured phrase, so it isn't immediately clear how it was composed. In this video, Pter Schubert shows how a look at subsequent phrases reveals a structural duo embellished with dazzling vocal lines.

Link to Nikhil Hogan’s interview with Peter Schubert on the topic of Nadia Boulanger. Hear a first-hand account of what it was like to study with “Mademoiselle” in the late sixties: her larger-than-life presence, her commitment, her sense of humor, and how she taught theory …

The path Monteverdi takes between harmonic arrivals depends on three elements: the content of the phrases; whether the repetition of a phrase is altered; and how the joints between phrases are made. I call these schemata, splices, and elisions, respectively. They are basic ingredients of the first thirteen madrigals in Book 5, which are mostly homorhythmic.