The Great Courses course classical music music

The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works

Lecture 1 - Game Plan and Preliminaries

1700s the orchestra comes into being
Composers were writing orchestral music thanks to the concept of orchestration
- How a composer assigns instruments to the melodic and accompanimental parts of a composition
Baroque era
- 1600 to 1750
- Musically revolutionary time
- Opera evolved from modest entertainment to hugely popular industry
- Antonio Vivaldi, George Frederick Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach created great bodies of work
Romantic era
- 1827 to 1900
- After the death of Beethoven
Composers began searching for "expressive originality" at the turn of the 20th century
- Hyper-romanticism
Major musical forms:
- Ritornello
  - Theme returns over the course of a movement
  - Most common among baroque-era instrumental procedures
- Theme and variations
- Minuet and trio
  - Moderate, three-step dance
- Scherzo
  - Same structure of minuet and trio
  - Removes ritual repetitions
  - Speeds up movements
- Rondo
- Sonata
  - Two or more contrasting themes exist
- Double exposition
  - Sonata for concertos
Orchestral genres:
- Solo concerto
  - Multi-movement work
  - Soloist is accompanied by (or pitted against) an orchestra
- Concerto grosso
  - Multi-movement work
  - Multiple soloists are accompanied by (or pitted against) an orchestra
- Symphony
  - Multi-movement work composed for an orchestra
- Symphonic/tone poem
  - Single-movement orchestral work
  - Tells an extra-musical or programmatic story
- Suite
  - Concert consisting of a collection of dances
  - Extracted from a longer ballet
Terms:
- Classical
  - Works of art between the 17th and 18th centuries
  - Characterized by clear lines and balanced forms
- Harmony
  - Art and science of manipulating multiple pitches
- Homophonic texture/homophony
  - Texture in which the melodic line predominates
- Melody
  - A succession of pitches
- Polyphonic texture/polyphony
  - Texture consisting of two or more simultaneous melodies of equal importance
  - Counterpoint
- Texture
  - Number of melodies present and relationships between them
  - Includes monophony, polyphony, heterophony, and homophony
- Tonal/tonality
  - Sense that one pitch is central to a section of music