University Musical Encyclopedia: Vocal Music and Musicians.
by Louis Charles Elson (9780217141529)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACCOMPANIED VOCAL MUSIC By John Pyke Hullah OriginVocal Solo Repertoire?Mezzo Soprano and Barytone Voices?Solo Performances of Amateurs?Importance of the Words?Defects of Vocal Utterance?Translations Unsatisfactory?Folk-songs: English, Scottish, and Irish ?Duets, Trios, Quartets, etc.?Isolated Movements vs. Connected Wholes. HP HIS, the most popular kind of music, dates, bar- ring individual experiments, from the end of the sixteenth century, and owes its beginnings to the efforts of the Academy of Florence to recover the music of the ancients. Its first successes are due to Giacomo Carissimi, who lived long enough (1604-74) to see it attain considerable perfection both in his own compositions and through the efforts of others, not only in Italy but also in France and England, who profited indirectly as well as directly from his example or instruction. Its development was subsequently carried still further in Germany. As we have it now, its two kinds, sacred and secular, may be roughly classed as music for solo voice, music for two or more solo voices, choral music, and music wherein any two or all of these classes may be combined. Thus we have the solo with chorus; the duet, trio, or quartet with chorus; the chorus proper interspersed with solos, and so on. The repertoire of vocal solos is practically inexhaustible. Probably a composer has never lived who hasnot written a song, and many composers have written hundreds. Till comparatively recent times, solos for the lower voices of both sexes (contraltos and basses) were far less numerous than those for the higher (sopranos and tenors). Lord Mount Edgcumbe (died 1839), who lived to make acquaintance with the now consummated change in this matter, contended (in his "Musical Reminiscences") that this change was not an impr...

USD $19.99

   Dispatch: Immediate - In Stock