Student
Guide
ï The
students will participate in activities exploring harmony, melody, rhythm, and
form.
ï The
students will illustrate proper phrasing and dynamics in late Renaissance
music.
ï The
students will perform the piece with understanding of the context and proper
vowel shapes.
ï The
students will investigate the historical background of the piece, its composer,
and the general culture surrounding the piece.
ï The
students will complete numerous in-class and out-of-class assignments
pertaining to music enrichment.
ï The
students will evaluate their own performance.
Composer
Information:
William Byrd (1543 - 1623)
Byrd was the leading English composer of his
generation, and together with his continental colleagues Giovanni Palestrina (c.1525-1594) and Orlando de Lassus
(1532-1594), one of the acknowledged great masters of the late Renaissance.
Byrd is considered by many the greatest English composer of any age, and indeed
his substantial volume of high quality compositions in every genre of the time
makes it easy to consider him the greatest composer of the Renaissance – his
versatility and genius outshining those of Palestrina and Lassus in a self-evident
way. English music of the period was amazingly rich, dominating the music of
the continent in depth and variety, in a way that was not seen before or since.
Also, Byrd's pre-eminent position at the beginning of music publication in
England allowed him to leave a substantial printed legacy at the inception of
many important musical forms. It would be impossible to over-estimate his
subsequent influence on the music of England, the Low Countries, and Germany.
Byrd was probably born in Lincoln where he
took up the post of organist at an early age. Later he accepted a position in
the Royal Chapel of Queen Elizabeth. Byrd was a Catholic in Protestant England,
and though this position demanded a certain amount of seclusion and discretion,
his loyalty to the Crown was never in doubt. Indeed, Byrd continued to enjoy
the favor of the Queen, as well as continuation of his privilege as sole holder
of the publishing monopoly which had been awarded jointly to Byrd and Thomas Tallis (his
teacher) before the latter's death.
Important Compositions:
Latin
Masses
English
Church Music
Latin
and English Motets – Sing Joyfully, Ave Verum Corpus
Keyboard
Works
Commissioned works for Queen Elizabeth
Please visit this
web link for more cultural background on William Byrd:
ï Click ‘My Maps’ on the left hand side a few inches down.
ï Click on ‘The World of William Byrd’
ï Begin by clicking on each area and read the information given.
ï On the right hand side on the bubble, click’more’ then click on ‘Street View’.
ï If you put your cursor in the right hand side of the picture, it will say ‘Photos’. Click on this for each site.
After viewing the
web link and visiting all the ‘sites’, please answer the following questions:
1) Where did William Byrd work for Queen Elizabeth?
2) What color is the building of the above answer?
3) Roughly how far from one another is Stop 1 and Stop 3 on the list?
4) Under what Queen was Byrd a choir boy?
After viewing the videos in class of different types of Renaissance
music, please find a video of your own that incorporates all these elements
into one (instrumental, choral, dancing).
Poetry:
Direct Text:
I have longed for thy saving health, O Lord; thy law is my delight.
O let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and thy judgments shall help me.
Comes directly from Psalm 119: 174-145. In the King James’ Version:
174I have longed for thy salvation, O LORD; and thy law is my delight.
175Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy judgments help me.
Critical Thinking:
Based on reading the Psalms, in your own words, please write down what you think the text means to you personally.
Form Analysis:
The song is the form called Binary. This means a way of structuring a piece of music in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated.
As you can see, there are two large sections, then 2 different parts, repeated twice within these two large sections.
If the phrase line over the sections imply a section or part, then what
do the small lines directly above the symbols mean?
Exactly what length in measures are these
lines?
Please add in these lines to your own scores!
They will be checked.
Practice Methods:
Rhythmic, Harmonic and Melodic Patterns:
Practice Suggestions:
ï Begin by practicing sections with just rhythm.
ï Tap a steady beat on your sternum and choose a syllable to speak the rhythm (“ta”, etc.)
ï Repeat repeatedly. J
ï The last example will help you understand the modulation. It is an a minor scale next to a C Major scale. How are these two keys related?
The Art Gallery:
“Annunciation” “The Conversion of St. Paul”
-El Greco, 1600 -Balbi, 1600
“The Rainbow Portrait” “Still-life”
-Unknown, 1603 -Cotan, 1600
Themes:
What do these
paintings have in common?
What are their
particular subject matter?
Why are all the
paintings dating from 1600?
Extra Credit: Who is the woman in the painting in
the bottom left hand corner?
Critical Thinking:
How do each of these paintings make you feel based on the elements of
color, light, subject matter, etc?
These four paintings all have
different subject matter. Byrd was avidly creating music for all four of these
subject matter. What are the four
subject matter in broad terms?
Understanding:
Begin to incorporate these ideas, colors, emotions, and cultural factors into the correlating piece “I Have Longed for Thy Saving Health.” All of these elements discussed (harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and cultural) will create a learning experience not only for you as a student, but will radiate into our audiences.
Glossary:
Picardy Third: A harmonic device used in European music; It refers to the use of a major chord of the tonic at the end of a musical section which is either modal or in a minor key.
Motet: (French mot: “word”), style of vocal composition that has undergone numerous transformations through many centuries. Typically, it is a Latin religious choral composition, yet it can be a secular composition or a work for soloist(s) and instrumental accompaniment, in any language, with or without a choir.
Consort: A phrase used in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to indicate an instrumental ensemble. These could be of the same or a variety of instruments. Consort music enjoyed considerable popularity at court and in households of the wealthy in the Elizabethan era and many pieces were written for consorts by the major composers of the period. In the Baroque era, consort music was absorbed into Chamber music.
Binary: A way of structuring a piece of music in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated.
Modulation: Most commonly the act or process of changing from one key (tonic, or tonal center) to another.
Canon: Contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g. quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader (or dux), while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower (or comes). The follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof
Melos: The rhythm, movement, and sound of words; the aspect of literature which is analogous to music, and often shows some actual relation to it.