Early Music Trivia #2

Early Music Trivia #2

Multiple Choice

The concerto delle donne was a group of women who sang virtuosic, coloratura polyphony in the Este court in Ferrara. They were associated with the Duke's musica secreta. What was musica secreta?

• the Duke's secret compositions, which were performed anonymously so the Duke could get honest reactions

• music with the Duke's name concealed within the lyrics, as an Easter egg for the cognoscenti

• "sacred music," in the local Emilian dialect of Italian

• a regular series of chamber music concerts performed for private audiences

Multiple Choice

Francesco Landini, the most influential musician of the Italian trecento, was blind. How did he lose his sight?

• he was blind from birth

• he had smallpox as a child

• he was involved in a tragic lute accident

• he was injured in one of Florence's many political revolts

Multiple Choice

Western plainchant is notated using neumes, which show the up-and-down motion of musical notes. Which of these is a kind of neume?

• bombyx

• clivis

• flaouna

• verruca

Multiple Choice

Johannes Ockeghem, the Franco-Flemish composer renowned for his ability to solve tricky contrapuntal puzzles without sacrificing musical expression, was hired as a left-hand singer in the Antwerp cathedral in 1443. What distinguished a left-hand singer?

• left-handers sang polyphony, while right-handers sang chant

• left-handers also served as page-turners for the organist

• left-handers were left-handed, and ineligible to receive Communion

• left-handers conducted the choir with their left hand, while holding their music with their right

Multiple Choice

In early Latin American choral music, what does the term tiple indicate?

• the line is to be sung by a treble voice

• the line is to be sung with a guitar-like instrument doubling it

• the line is to be sung playfully, as though tipsy

• the line is to be sung repeatedly as a refrain between verses

Multiple Choice

In 1591, the 天正遣欧少年使節 (Tenshō Ken'ō Shōnen Shisetsu), four Jesuit-trained Japanese musicians, having returned from a five-year tour of Catholic Europe, performed Western polyphony for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the great samurai who unified Japan. Whose work did they perform?

• John Dunstaple

• Josquin Desprez

• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

• Tomás Luis de Victoria

Multiple Choice

In this video clip, the Powerpuff Girls introduce the song "Love Makes the World Go Round," and then use the long-held notes of that melody as the cantus firmus with two new, rhythmically independent texts added in the two upper voices. In medieval music, we would call this

• hocketing

• an isorhythmic motet

• a polytextual motet

• mannerism

Multiple Choice

Jacobus Gallus is the Latin form of his name; Jacob Handl, the German. Both gallus and Handl mean rooster. It's surmised that his birth name was Jakob Petelin, with Gallus and Handl translated from the original

• Belarussian

• Czech

• Slovak

• Slovenian

Multiple Choice

Aʿwād (أعواد), the principal instruments of the medieval Arab-speaking world, are the direct ancestor of

• the crwth

• the lute

• the sackbut

• the noseflute

Multiple Choice

In Beowulf, the sound of the harp and the clear song of a nobleman are heard in Hrothgar's hall. That nobleman was functioning as a

• scop

• skald

• griot

• Minnesinger