Music and Dramatic Genres: From Opera to Modern Sound

Opera Seria

Opera seria is a sung dramatic form, based on a harmonious language and a rich variety of musical resources. Its star-class characters, often criticized by the aristocracy, stand out naturally. The music is designed to highlight the voice, using a low economy of means. Its study sites are numerous, the aria is the great protagonist, the work has three acts, and the orchestra has no dramatic role.

Opera Buffa

Opera buffa is the comic counterpart of opera seria, with a popular character. Its language is harmonic, its stars are closer to everyday life, and it also criticizes the aristocratic class. Voices are highlighted naturally with an economical approach, and it frequently features short musical repetitions. The genre gave rise to the first satire and social criticism in opera.

Romanticism in Opera

Three factors influenced the genre during the Romantic period: the influence of the French Revolution, the growth of the middle class, and the nationalist ideals expressed in Italy and Germany. Italy stood out with Rossini, who helped the Italian opera achieve independence, while Germany stood out with Carl Maria von Weber and Wagner.

Major Genres of Opera

The great opera and the great comic spectacle were defined by naturalist compositions and a musical language that was increasingly expressive.

Zarzuela

The zarzuela takes its name from the Palace of La Zarzuela, where these works were first performed. It is a Spanish theatrical genre of comic character, alternating spoken scenes and sung passages. Its music represents a sweet, loving theme, idealized and pastoral, with tragicomic and popular elements. Its characteristic features include popular language, strong musical characterization of its characters, defense of traditional values, and an entertainment purpose.

Tonadilla

The tonadilla is a short, satirical scenic work that paints a playful picture of Spanish customs. It served as an intermezzo between comedies, with simple action and comic types inspired by popular life and Spanish folklore.

Género Chico

The género chico is a lyrical, comic, short and burlesque variant of our theatre, characterized by an abundance of wordplay, anti-heroic characters, and the intent to entertain and amuse. It makes use of exaggeration.

Género Chico in Mexico

In Mexico, the género chico was a theatrical work in one act with a comic character. Its music was drawn from folk and popular sources, and it used love themes and characters of a distinctive nature.

Popular Types

The popular types include the sainete, a musical comic act in one scene with a clear plot, and the revista, a succession of scenes without a clear argument.

Dance

Dance is a combination of rhythmic body movements. Popular dance is danced by untrained people as a natural expression of feeling. Courtly dance was used for nobility. Classical choreographic dance is more complicated, and modern dance offers total freedom of approach.

Three Types of Ballet

Classical ballet features dancers in tutus and dances with precise steps. Romantic ballet represents spiritual scenes and magical worlds. Modern ballet allows the dancer and the dance to be freely expressed.

Renaissance and Baroque Music

Popular music, social gatherings, and dance forms were central, with movements of the head and body being gradually refined.

Expressionism

Expressionism involves dramatic ballet, deforming faces and bodies, and the invention of new dance actions.

Classicism

Classicist opera attempts to represent natural human emotion, suppressing excessive aspects and giving more relief to the chorus. Its leading figures include Gluck and Mozart.

Spanish Dance

Spanish dance is individual, with postures that are introverted and largely improvised, and it is often static in its positions.

Changes in Musical Language in the Twentieth Century

Melody: Composers dispensed with traditional formal balance, avoiding symmetry and repetition.

Key: Composers tended to use all twelve semitones equally.

Harmony: Composers tended to use chords of six or seven notes, or more different notes.

Rhythm: Composers explored rhythms in 5, 7, 11, or 13 time.

Orchestra: Composers used music in blocks, and each composer investigated their own approach.

Impressionism

Impressionism broke the musical language of the period, obscuring its structures and not clearly marking chronological periods, creating an imprecise atmosphere.

Atonality

Atonality is a musical movement of modernity toward a new concept that denies the tradition of harmony and the continuous presence of tonal centers. Melody is free, and the music does not follow any fixed form.

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism began with Stravinsky, who sought to recover a more pleasant music. It is characterized by a return to the balance of the Baroque and Classical periods and the recovery of melody.

Dodecaphony

Dodecaphonic composition is based on a relationship between all twelve notes of the chromatic scale. It is characterized by a distance from tonal harmony, free melody, and a logical structure, producing music that is melodic but not harmonious.

Integral Serialism

Integral serialism is a way of composing in which the first order series is used to determine all parameters of the work, preferably using dodecaphonic series.

Indeterminacy

In indeterminacy, the author does not fully determine the score, so the performer invents the music as it plays.

Group Composition

Group composition involves multiple sets of composers working together.

Stochastic Music

Stochastic music is composed by computer, using probability and statistics, and it uses citations and collages of traditional tonal music, distorting them by including external elements.

Minimalism

Minimalism uses reduced musical complexity, interplay between parts, and direct sensory experience.

Nationalism

Music tradition in nationalism is closely linked to national identity, drawing on Spanish variations of folk songs and similar elements.

Analog and Digital Sound

Analog sound involves variations of electrical tension similar to the oscillations of the sound wave. Digital sound represents the wave by a number series, measuring the amplitude of the wave at successive instants.

Recording Technology

Cylinders and discs: These record vibrations of sound through needle incisions.

Samplers: These allow capture of any sound, which can later be processed.

Mixing: Recording and processing of musical information.

Synthesizers

Synthesizers generate musical instrument sounds using one or several methods of synthesis.

Conductor

The conductor is the person responsible for the charge of achieving rhythmic accuracy, and for reading the signs and symbols of the score written by the composer.