Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Music for Baccalaureate

Bad Romance Lyrics: Lady Gaga's Iconic Pop Anthem

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Song Introduction

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh!

Caught in a bad romance

Pre-Chorus

Rah rah ah-ah-ah! Ro mah ro-mah-mah

Gaga oh-la-la! Want your bad romance

Verse 1

I want your ugly, I want your disease

I want your everything, as long as it's free

I want your love, love-love-love, I want your love

I want your drama, the touch of your hand

I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand

I want your love, love-love-love, I want your love

(Love-love-love, I want your love)

You know that I want you

And you know that I need you

I want it bad, your bad romance

Chorus

I want your love and I want your revenge

You and me could write a bad romance (Oh-oh-oh-oh-oooh!)

I want your love and all your lovers' revenge

You and me could write a bad romance

Post-Chorus

Oh-oh-oh-oh-...

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Romanticism: Characteristics, Themes, and Key Authors

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Romanticism: An Overview

Romanticism is a movement that emerged in Germany in the late eighteenth century and spread throughout Europe during the early nineteenth century. It prioritized imagination and sensibility over reason, emphasizing self-exaltation, restless excitement, and the flow of passions. Romanticism invites evasion through the fantastic, irrational, mysterious, or frightening, while also engaging with the political realities of its time.

General Characteristics

  1. Individualism and Subjectivism: The importance of the self is emphasized, claiming originality as the concept of the modern artist. It often flees to the values of the Middle Ages, exploring themes of society, the night, and exotic elements.
  2. Revaluation of the Middle Ages:
...
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French Classical Drama and Cervantes's Novel: Key Aspects

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French Classical Drama

The theater became one of the major genres in European literature in the 16th century. During the Middle Ages, the first theatrical performances sprang from religious and secular matters.

The fifteenth century was an important step in the history of the theater. Dances of death became fashionable, and humanistic comedy also emerged with important Spanish works such as La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas. At the end of the sixteenth century, the fusion of popular and cultured theatrical trends led to the birth of national theaters in England, Spain, and France.

The theater in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became a mass spectacle, and plays reflected the life, feelings, and needs of the people.

Some theorists believed...

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Key Characters in The Phantom of the Opera Novel

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The Main Characters of The Phantom of the Opera

Erik: The Phantom of the Opera

Also known as the Angel of Music, Erik is a man who lives in a labyrinth underneath the Paris Opera House. His face was deformed since birth, and he always wears a mask. He is a brilliant architect and musician. He falls in love with Christine Daaé and fights bitterly for her affections. He “haunts” the opera house and demands that its operations be run a certain way.

Christine Daaé

Christine is a Swedish soprano at the Paris Opera House. She is the daughter of a renowned violin player who died when she was young. She worked in the ballet chorus before the Angel of Music (Erik) helped train her voice. She falls in love with both Erik and Raoul, Viscount of Chagny,...

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Elizabethan Literature and Theater: Sonnets, Prose, and Drama

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Elizabethan Literature and Theater

Poetry: Sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets, written in the mid-1590s, utilize the Elizabethan form instead of the earlier popular Petrarchan form. These poems explore themes of love, time, and power, much like his plays.

  • Volta: A rhetorical shift or turn in a sonnet.
  • Tetralogy: A series of four related dramas, operas, or novels.
  • Encomium: A speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.
  • Blazon: A poetic mode using metaphor, simile, and hyperbole to describe a lover's body.
  • Allegory: A story, poem, or picture with a hidden meaning, often moral or political.
  • Picaresque: A type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a roguish protagonist.

Prose: Sir Francis Bacon

Sir Francis Bacon refined the...

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A History of Western Music: From Ancient Greece to Romanticism

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Ancient Greece

Music, Poetry, Dance

MII (Musical Instruments): lyre & aulos

Middle Ages

Religious Music

  • Gregorian Chant: Developed by Pope Gregory, destined for the liturgy.

Secular Music

  • Troubadours (11th Century, France):
  • Cantigas (Alfonso X, "Estrela do dia", Spain):

Renaissance

Protestant Reformation

  • Chorale (1510): Simple composition based on popular melodies.

English Reformation

  • Anthem (1534): Similar to the motet.

Counter Reformation

  • Motet: Religious polyphony, brief, "not to please the ear but to link their souls to God".
  • Mass: Compound musical form (all the pieces of the liturgy).

MIC (Main Important Composers)

  • Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
  • Orlando di Lasso
  • Cristóbal de Morales
  • Tomás Luis de Victoria

Secular Music

  • Italy: Madrigal: Compound polyphonic
...
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French Painting Styles: Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism

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Neoclassical Painting in France (Late 18th-19th Century)

Neoclassical painting in France extended well into the nineteenth century, sometimes blurring the lines between classicism and romanticism. Characteristics: Absence of motion, emphasis on drawing, patronage by the upper classes, and academic style. Key Artists:

  • David: The most representative Neoclassical painter, known for balanced compositions and his role as the painter of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Famous works include The Assassination of Marat and The Coronation of Napoleon.
  • Gros: Also a painter of Napoleon, depicting the emperor's deeds. Notable works include Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa.
  • Ingres: A bourgeois artist trained in Italy, primarily known for portraits
...
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Masterpieces of Western Music: Medieval to Romantic Eras

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Western Music Masterpieces: Periods and Characteristics

Medieval Music (c. 476 – 1400)

Puer natus nobis

  • Author: Anonymous
  • Features: Song of the Church, Latin text, free themes, free rhythm, modal system, monodic, a cappella.

Ondas do mar de Vigo

  • Author: Martin Codax
  • Time: 13th Century (S. XIII), Troubadour music
  • Features: Secular music written in Galician-Portuguese, monody with instrumental accompaniment, rhythmic structure, non-religious themes, modal system.

Cantigas de Santa Maria

  • Author: Alfonso X the Wise
  • Time: 13th Century (S. XIII)
  • Features: Secular music written in Galician-Portuguese, monody with instrumental accompaniment, rhythmic structure, non-religious themes, modal system.

Viderunt Omnes

  • Author: Léonin and Pérotin
  • Time: 13th Century (S.
...
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Traditional Spanish Lyric Poetry and Epic: From Jarchas to Ballads

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Traditional Spanish Lyric Poetry and Epic

Traditional Lyric Poetry

Traditional lyric poetry reflects the feelings of the people. Poetry accompanied fieldwork, domestic chores, and parties. It was designed to be easily memorized, as the population was largely illiterate. This anonymous poetry was transmitted orally, recited, and performed by juglares (minstrels), who traveled from town to town.

Common themes included love, fiestas, processions, and everyday activities. The language was characterized by short sentences, communicative density, and directness, with frequent interjections and expressions of affection.

Key Examples of Traditional Lyric Poetry

  • Jarchas: These were short poems that appeared at the end of a longer composition called a muwassaha.
...
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Dramatic Text Elements, Staging, Genres, and Literary Devices

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Elements of a Dramatic Text

  • Acts constitute the most important division of a play, beginning with the rise and fall of the curtain.
  • Some works' acts are divided into scenes, distinguished by a change of scenery.
  • The scenes are part of an act, usually with no change of scene when a character enters or leaves.
  • Dialogue between characters is the most important resource of a dramatic text.
  • The monologue occurs when a single actor speaks.
  • Characters, both major and minor, advance the dramatic action.
  • Stage directions are indications that the author proposes (scenery, etc.).
  • Asides are messages that go to the public, with actors pretending that the other characters do not hear them.

Elements of Staging

  • The stage is where the actors are located.
  • The
...
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