By the end of the semester, the student should be able to:
This course covers eight hundred years of music history, plus some. We will study works in eight different languages, as well as a handful of untexted works, and will explore compositions intended for the church, the court, the home, the stage, and the tavern. In order to successfully master the information, you must keep up with the reading, the listening, and the lectures. You'll be developing a vocabulary for discussing early music, and repetition in small doses will serve you much better than cramming.
By the end of the semester, you should be able to "categorize medieval and Renaissance works by genre and by century and generation." This means that you will need to be able to recall the various genres and their characteristics. For instance, you should be able to distinguish between an early motet and a conductus, or tell the difference between an introit and a gradual.
Hints:
You'll also need to be aware of chronological details. I generally break up medieval-Renaissance history into a number of distinct categories, ranging from a period of three centuries to a single generation; see the rough chronology (or use the class handout). By the end of the semester, you should be able to be able to place a given composer, work, or stylistic innovation into its appropriate historical context.
Hints:
By the end of this course, you should also have learned how to "evaluate a given work in a period-appropriate vocabulary." If you have specific questions about the meaning of a term, consult the Harvard Dictionary or the ORB Medieval Music Glossary; you can also ask me in person or by e-mail.
Several study strategies will help you learn the appropriate vocabulary.
First, complete the readings before class, and arm yourself with questions that you'd like answered in class--then ask them. If you're not comfortable raising the question in class, come to office hours. Don't wait until the night before the exam to discover that you don't know what a responsorial chant is.
Second, I strongly recommend reading with a pen in hand, and providing yourself with an outline the first time you read something. This will save you both stress and time in the long run. When I read something academic, I generally put a word or two in the margin that reminds me of what the paragraph is about; other people prefer to outline the text on notebook paper.
This process--writing while you read--does two things for you. Most importantly, it forces you to figure out what the point is, so that you are thinking while you read. This vastly improves retention. Also, it gives you a convenient study guide when you come back to the material later. I still use my old and fading marginal notes in Grout when I need a music history "factoid" in a hurry.
Similarly, when you run across a technical term (such as "trope" or even "motet") you should be sure that you understand what it means. Be aware that a number of technical terms change meaning over time; the 14th century madrigal and the 16th century madrigal, for example, are considered to be two entirely different genres. If the term (or genre) is new, you might want to underline it in the text, and make a marginal note of why it is important.
Third, mark your scores! Draw attention to the significant features of each example we study this semester. Write vocabulary words over a section of music that illustrates them, draw arrows to remind yourself of the sometimes confusing patterns of repetition, label pieces with the genres they represent, etc. In most instances, your focus will be at the level of formal considerations (large-scale musical repetition; motivic devices; major harmonic goals; etc.) rather at the local level of harmonic analysis.
My first step while listening is usually to mark the cadences with a half-bracket; the second time through I watch and listen for musical repetition at any level; I then turn to the text and find out what topics this piece could exemplify and write a list of vocabulary at the top of the page. Use colored highlighter, pen, pencil, crayon, yellow-stickies, huge marked arrows--whatever will help you figure out what is significant about this piece.
As you study medieval and Renaissance music history, remember that music does not exist in a vacuum. The tidbits of history and politics that you encounter in your readings, in class discussions, and in your research reflect the impact of context upon musical creation. Thus, by the end of the semester, you should be able to "assess the impact of major social, cultural and political developments on musical life and musical style of the Middle Ages and Renaissance."
This kind of studying is probably familiar to you from history and literature classes. In general, you'll find the necessary information in Grout, in the Music in the Western World readings, and in class notes.
As you prepare for exams (or think about potential paper topics), consider the individuals and groups involved with music who weren't composers. Who performed a piece? Who paid for it? Who might have heard it? How did social considerations affect the way the composer wrote the piece?
Try to generate questions that will allow you to compare the musical life of several centuries. And above all, try to imagine how this music would have affected the lives of the medieval and Renaissance men and women who encountered it.