Revision: Secular Vocal Music

　　Weelkes, Sing We at Pleasure

　　Background information and original performance circumstances

　　- This piece is a Madrigal.

　　- Madrigals were massively popular amongst the "educated classes" of late Elizabethan England. They might have been sung by the family and guests as after-dinner entertainment (they were a bundle of laughs weren't they?!).

　　- They were highly flexible and could be played by any assortment of voices or instruments, as long as they could offer the required ranges.

　　- This is a light-hearted type of madrigal, known as a ballet, characterized by syllabic word setting, dancing rhythms (triple time rhythms with dotted notes, syncopation --alto bars 7 and 12-- also use of hemiola -- bars 20-21) and a 'fa-la' refrain

　　Structure

　　- Like most ballets, Sing We at Pleasure is in binary form. Both sections end with a 'fa la' refrain and both are repeated.

　　This is what the structure looks like:

　　Section 1

　　bars 1-8 first couplet

　　bars 8-22 first refrain

　　Repeat of section 1

　　Section 2

　　bars 22-31 second couplet

　　bars 31-43 third couplet

　　bars 43-53 second refrain

　　repeat of section 2 with soprano exchange

　　Background information and original performance circumstances

　　- In contrast to Weelkes' light-hearted ballet, this piece is a serious madrigal with "sophisticated text” by Guarini, a major Italian lyric poet of the time.

　　- It is written for highly trained professionals to perform at private concerts to aristocratic audiences.

　　- Monteverdi uses representational style meaning he wanted to reflect the subject of the text in his music. "Ohime" can be directly translated as the Shakespearean or Dumbledorean.

　　Bars 1-4

　　- "Ohime" is set as a falling third, falling from a weak beat to a strong beat. Basically, it sounds like a sigh.

　　- An exchange of sighs represented as dialogue between the male and female voices (the alto in this piece is also male)

　　- As soon as G minor has been established as the tonic (which is of the whole madrigal) it is once again banished in bars 3-4 where B flat Major appears, muddied by the E natural.

　　bars 12-19

　　- There is a free sequence in the form of bars 10-11 repeated a 3rd higher in bars 12-13, then a 4th higher in bars 14-15.

　　1. bar 16: The unprepared G un the bass clashes with all the other notes of the F major chord.

　　2. bars 16-17: Similar effects occur when the B natural in the tenor and bar 16 beat 4 and the quinto's D at bar 17 beat 2 form an acute discord against the prevailing chord of A major.

　　3. bar 17 beats 3-4: The movement of the quinto from G to F forms parallel 7ths with the movement of the bass from A to G. The sustained E in the canto clashes with both the quinto's F and the alto's D in the fourth beat.

　　4. bar 18 The conventional consonant 4th at the cadence (canto minim D) is frustrated by the alto's G above the bass A, which refuses to obey (maybe it should be punished) the principle that 7ths should fall.

　　- There are differing textures, ranging from thee-part and five-part homophony (bars 20-23, 29-33)

　　- The extraordinary also part in bar 56. There is a truly awesome false relation between the F sharp and the F natural nearly two octaves above in the canto part.

　　- The dominant pedal and interlocking suspensions in the closing bars, which lead to a final "Ohime", set to the progression of IIIb-I with a tierce de picardie on the last chord. This unusual type of perfect cadence gives the listener absolutely no doubt about the lovers’ success in achieving what they set out to do, so to speak.

　　- This piece is through-composed, meaning that each section of the poem has new music, the structure being determined by the text. However the calls of "Ohime" do act as a unifying device throughout the piece.

　　Background information and original performance circumstances

　　- "Summertime" comes from Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess", a work that is as much at home on Broadway as it is in an Opera House - i.e. it is modern, 20th century and contemporary.

　　- The opera is based on a short novel "Porgy" by DuBose Heyward.

　　- The story is all about the impoverished lives of the black community in South Carolina, at the beginning of the 20th century.

　　- It's full of jazz and folk influence of the 1920's and 30's

　　Rhythm and meter

　　- There are printed syncopations that are known as leans (note sung just after the beat) bar 15 and pushes (note sung just before the beat) bar 16.