So we’ve travelled the best part of 2,000 or 3,000 years as we’ve examined the history of music, and especially the history of vocal music. If you’ve missed any of the posts in this series, you can jump to all of them here: Introduction – Early History Renaissance Era Baroque Read more…
October is here and it’s time for a new Composer of the Month This month, to time with this composer’s birthday, I’ve chosen one of the “one hit wonders” of the musical world. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that many composers who are now only known for one work struggled Read more…
For most people, when they think of “modern” music, the first things that spring to mind are either contemporary popular music (which is a story for another series), atonalism, or 4’33. For singers, however, none of these ideas really reflect the vocal music produced in the 20th century. It feels Read more…
The Romantic Period in musical history is so termed because it’s an era of music that’s endlessly high on emotion whether in art, music, or literature. Largely, this “Romanticism” is considered to be a reaction to the developing Industrial Revolution which saw machines take over from people and cities grow Read more…
If the Baroque Era was the era of music for Kings, the Classical Era was music for escapism. As we learned in the last part of this series, the music of the Baroque era was composed for Kings and Dukes. However, as Capitalism began to rule supreme in Europe, composers Read more…
Welcome to the very first Composer of the Month. This is a new regular series in which I will explore the vocal music of different composers. As part of Composer of the Month, a free pdf will be available of this month’s composer for you to use with your students. Read more…
Last week, we began journeying through the history of music with the Renaissance period. The Renaissance slowly transitioned into the Baroque (Bar-RO-ck) period around the start of the 16th Century. The name Baroque developed from a Latinate word meaning “rough or imperfect pearl” and was actually initially used to make fun Read more…
The Renaissance – a time of grandeur, of experimentation and of scientific progress. For me, the Renaissance (ruh-NAY-sonce) conjures up grand Italian and Spanish courts with explorers and architects lining up to impress the monarchs. (Well, unless you pronounce it REN-ess-ahns, in which case, it’s bad wench costumes and spit roast pig Read more…
When learning to read musical notation, the representation of pitch is pretty logical. When the blobs go up, the pitch gets higher, when the blobs go down the pitch gets lower. So far, so good. However, what’s less clear is rhythm. Most musical theory works start with the crotchet, or Read more…
Our new blog series for the remainder of the summer is a history of music for singers. This isn’t meant to be a “history of singing”, not least because it’s a fairly under researched area. Instead, I want to touch on some of the changes and developments in music that Read more…