Meeting in Music: Avaxian: Scarabou

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Following the guide below you will be able to create the ultimate HQ rip and upload for sharing here at the Meeting in Music Internet Community or on your own blog if you have one.

RIPPING A CD USING EXACT AUDIO COPY (EAC)

1. Start Exact Audio Copy and load the clean and scratchless CD into you drive.
2. Pressing ALT+G will pull track and album info from the FreeDB database if this feature is set up properly.
3. If no info is found the CD is not registered in the database and you will have to type in the info manually.
4. Adjust the Drive Settings according to the model of your drive and enable the ”Create Log-file” option.
5. Adjust the Compression Settings to rip in Flac format at 768 kBit/s. Alternatively rip in the Ape fomat.
6. Rip the CD by pressing Action -> Test & Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet -> Compressed...
7. Check the log-file to see if any ripping errors or AccurateRip inaccuracies were registered.

SCANNING THE COVERS OF THE ALBUM

1. Scans of the front and back covers should be included if available as should the booklet. 300dpi is standard.

COMPRESSING THE FOLDER USING WINRAR

1. Wrap the audio files and images in a folder marked the composer and album name etc.
2. Set Compression method to ”Store” and the volume size to 200000000. Add a 3% recovery record.
3. Compress the folder using a not-too-obvious filename.

UPLOADING TO A FILEHOST AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD

Now all you need to do is to upload the rar-files to a filehost of your choice. Mega.nz is the standard and most stable option but there are many others and some services even feature upload to multiple filehosts. Finally the download links are ready to be presented on your blog.

THE MEDIEVAL ERA (600 - 1450)

At around 500 AD, western civilization began to emerge from the period known as “The Dark Ages”, the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns and Visigoths overran Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating “Holy” Crusades against the East, establishing universities, and generally dictating the destiny of music, art and literature

During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the creation of a new kind of music called organum.

Secular music was sung all over Europe by the troubadours and trouvères of France, and it was during the Middle Ages that western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guilliame de Machaut.

THE RENAISSANCE ERA (1450 - 1600)

Generally considered to be from c.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means “rebirth”) was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and sciences throughout Europe.

With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.

The late Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and others.

THE BAROQUE ERA (1600 - 1750)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (c.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.

THE CLASSICAL ERA (1750 - 1820)

From roughly 1750 to 1820, artists, architects, and musicians moved away from the heavily ornamented styles of the Baroque and the Rococo, and instead embraced a clean, uncluttered style they thought reminiscent of Classical Greece.

At this time the Austrian capital of Vienna became the musical centre of Europe, and works of the period are often referred to as being in the Viennese style. Composers came from all over Europe to train in and around Vienna, and gradually they developed and formalized the standard musical forms that were to dominate European musical culture for the next several decades. The Classical period reached its majestic culmination with the masterful symphonies, sonatas, and string quartets by the three great composers of the Viennese school: Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

During the same period, the first voice of the burgeoning Romantic musical ethic can be found in the music of Viennese composer Franz Schubert.

THE ROMANTIC ERA (1820 - 1910)

The earliest Romantic composers were all born within a few years of each other in the early years of the nineteenth century. These include the great German masters Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann; the Polish poet of the piano Frédéric Chopin; the French genius Hector Berlioz; and the greatest pianistic showman in history, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. The field of Italian opera was dominated by Giuseppe Verdi, while German opera was virtually monopolized by Richard Wagner.

Composers like Antonin Dvorak began looking for ways in which they could express the musical soul of their homelands. Legends were therefore used as plots for operas, and folk melodies and dance rhythms were frequently used as inspiration for symphonies and instrumental music.

With the continued enhancement of instruments, plus the invention of new ones, the late Romantic composers of the second half of the nineteenth-century created richer and ever larger symphonies, ballets, and concertos. Two of the giants of this period are the German-born Johannes Brahms and the great Russian melodist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY ERA (1910 - 1960)

In the early part of the twentieth century music became either outwardly expressive (as in the early symphonic poems of Richard Strauss, the huge symphonies of Gustav Mahler, or the operas of Giacomo Puccini), or more introverted (as in the so-called “impressionist” music of Claude Debussy). The previous century’s tide of Nationalism found a twentieth century advocate in the Hungarian Béla Bartók.

In a time of deepening psychological awareness, the expressionistic music of Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples germinated and flourished for a time.

Twentieth-century music has seen a great coming and going of various movements, among them post-romanticism, serialism and neo-classicism in the earlier years of the century, all of which were practiced at one time or another by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

Many of the greatest and best-known composers of the century, including Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich along with British composers William Walton and Benjamin Britten were those who wrote music directly descended from the approved models of the past, while investing these forms with a style and modernistic tone of their own.

THE LATE 20TH CENTURY ERA (1940 - 2000)

Composers of this era sought to free music from its rigidity, placing the performance above the composition. Similarly, many composers sought to break from traditional performance rituals by incorporating theatre and multimedia into their compositions, going beyond sound itself to achieve their artistic goals. In some cases the line is difficult to draw between genres. Composers were quick to adopt developing electronic technology. As early as the 1940s, composers such as Olivier Messiaen incorporated electronic instruments into live performance. Recording technology was used to produce art music, as well.

The musique concrète of the late 1940s and ’50s was produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds. Steve Reich created music by manipulating tape recordings of people speaking, and later went on to compose process music for traditional instruments based on such recordings. Other notable pioneers of electronic music include Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

As more electronic technology matured, so did the music. In the 1950s aleatoric music was first championed by American composer John Cage. Early minimalist compositions of the 1960s such as those by Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass stemmed from aleatoric and electronic music.

THE CONTEMPORARY ERA (from 1975)

In the broadest sense, contemporary music is any music being written in the present day. In the context of classical music the term has been applied to music written in the last quarter century or so, particularly works post-1975. Minimalism was practiced heavily throughout the latter half of the century and has carried over into the 21st century, with composers like Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and John Tavener working in the more popular “mystic minimalism” variant.

Recently there has been increasing stylistic variety, with far too many schools of composition to name or label. However, in general, there are three broad trends. The first is the continuation of modern avant-garde traditions, including musical experimentalism. The second are schools which sought to revitalize a tonal style based on previous common practice. The third focuses on non-functional triadic harmony, exemplified by composers working in the minimalist and related traditions.

8/31/2009

The Tournai Mass

The Tournai Mass is the oldest polyphonic Mass to have survived. Dating from 1349, it is preserved in the library of the cathedral of Tournai with identification number A 27 and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

It was traditional to “arrange” sections of the Propers of the Mass in polyphonic style to embellish the religious ceremonies of the great festival such as Christmas and Easter, but a new practise appeared during the 14th century. The text of the Ordinary of the Mass – the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei – was set to music with the intention of creating a cycle: the polyphonic Mass. Many exerpts from such works have survived, but the Tournai Mass is the first complete example to have done so.

The Tournai Mass is a compilation rather than a single unified composition; the various sections are not attributed to any individual composer and they all originate from different places and periods. They were assembled and seem to have been copied out by one particular clerk. The apparent cohesion of the group pieces is limited to the three-part homophonic writing common to all the pieces except for the final motet. Two types of notation are employed: Franconian or modal notation, characteristic of the Ars Antiqua, used in the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, and a mensural notation, showing the clerk’s mastery of the innovations brought in with the Ars Nova in the Gloria, Credo and Ite missa est.

Looking both backwards and forwards in time, this Mass gives clear evidence of the musical upheavals created by the Ars Nova, although it would be incorrect to imagine a homogenous musical practice springing into life at the same time as the treatises that describe it. The shock wave that was the Ars Nova spread at different speeds depending on place and environment: different styles coexisted and hybridises, whilst certain pieces were updated to reflect the new styles. Usages that today seem anachonistic then continued side by side, sometimes for long periods. The Tournai Mass belongs to this period: in it we see the elements of the new style being grafted onto the traditional forms.

The Ars Nova

It was in 1320 that Philippe de Vitry, Jean de Murs, Marchettus of Padua and Jacques de Liège created their first theories about what today is termed the Ars Nova. Their main innovations were intended to rationalise musical notation, allowing it to develop into a binary to ternary rhythm or vice versa, as well as new graphical elements for the shorter notes. The rules of counterpoint now laid down the principles of composition. A century earlier, Franco of Cologne had explicitly associated the idea of ternary rhythm with the Christian trinity, but from now onwards, every value had to be able to be divided by either two or three. Musical notation was thus loosened from its metaphysical content and became no more than the description of an event in sound.

Quarrels over aesthetics had set those who favoured the older style apart from the new. Pope John of Avignon issued a decree condemning the Ars Nova in 1324, forbidding a practice that, according to him, had given rise to an excess of virtuosity; the abuse of the hocket technique had made the sung texts incomprehensible and was also very little suited to calm meditation. Paradoxically, the new style of religious polyphony was to prosper, even at the Papal court.

The sections of the Mass

The Kyrie, Sanctus and Gloria are separate pieces and appear in no other manuscript. The presence of the Credo in the manuscripts of Apt, Ivrea, Madrid and Las Huelgas and of the Ite missa est in the Ivrea manuscript is proof of the circulation of musical currents between North and South and also establishes clear links with the Papal court in Avignon. In these pieces it is as if we sometimes hear three reflections of the same text; every trace of singer’s individuality is removed for the benefit of the ensemble.

Tournai Mass - Kyrie

The Kyrie develops in a rhythmical mode belonging to the previous century. Its homophonic and homorhythmic style recall the old conductus, long since fallen ou of fashion. The tenor line has not been identified. The notation, is late Franconian, from around 1330. The piece takes up half one page, the other half being used for the beginning of the Gloria. Each of the voices, notated on two lines, has its own text.

The Gloria has an unexpected amplitude; its greatly-extended tessitura demands a certain virtuosity from the two upper voices. Its Amen is particularly spectacular and consists of a long melisma with much use of the hocket technique. The musical writing clearly shows that the composer was very well acquainted with the art of Philippe de Vitry.

The Credo uses a style of writing that is simpler and more syllabic than that of the Gloria. Its presence in the Las Huelgas manuscript demonstrates that it was written before the innovations of the Ars Nova (Philippe de Vitry’s treatise is dated 1320) came into effect. It may well even be a recasting of an even older piece to suit the taste of the period. For us, it is the most disconcerting and the most ambiguous piece in the entire Mass with its use of the old discant technique. The extremely wide distances between the voices and their almost constant parallelism are tricky to handle. Short wordless passages link the larger musical sections; this procedure is also present in the Gloria and was to become customary, with Machaut in particular.

The Sanctus and the Agnus Dei are undeniably similar and seem to have been composed by the same hand. Their style and notation allow us to date them at the end of the 13th or the beginning of the 14th century. The Sanctus is notated as a motet, with the duplum and triplum in two columns and the tenor at the bottom of the page, each line being provided with its own text.

The Ite missa est is a bilingual motet with na isorhythmic structure that is characteristic of the Ars Nova. Included in the Ivrea manuscript, where it appears in the company of several pieces that were used in the Papal chapel in Avignon, it is also mentioned in the index of the Trémoïlle manuscript that has since unfortunately disappeared. The tenor line has not been identified. Whilst the text of the motetus is in Latin and is religious in character, the text of the triplum is secular and in a northern French dialect scattered with words from the Picardy dialect. The use of texts in different languages simultaneously and the association of profane love with a religious theme are common techniques employed in motet composition of the time.

Source: Laurence Brisset (Translation: Peter Lockwood) in the post La Messe de Tournai from the well-respected classical music blog Atrium Musicologicum, run by Luís Henriques, musicology student at the University of Évora (Portugal).

Download: Messe de Tournai ( 14th century) - Ensemble Organum - Marcel Pérès, posted by Scarabou.

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