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Choral dances:
The ancient Greeks can be said to have CREATED the
'logical approach' to the dance whereby classifying all its elements
and organizing all its parts into one unified system which is still
used today. In Greece the choral dance in honor of Dionysus played
a part in the development of the drama and in religious worship
as well as other god's and goddesses. These very early dances more
often than not used a poetic meter rather than a musical meter for
the rhythm.
Choral Dances are generally done in a
double file formation, which are done in all parts of the world,
were the particular motif of religious strife does not enter. Choral's
of this kind were widespread among the primitive |
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peoples of certain cultural levels around the 1400s, and are also frequent in Arabian countries today. They can even be found in Moorish
Spain.
Chorus:
in music, large group of singers performing in concert;
a group singing liturgical music is a choir. The term chorus may
also be used for a group singing or dancing together in
a musical or in ballet. By extension it can also mean the
refrain of a song. Choral music stems from religious and folk music,
both usually having interspersed singing.
French opera's:
Opera's began way back in the 12th Century. However
the French didn't officially begin untill 1669 with the establishment
of the Académie royale de Musique , which
was taken over in 1672 by dancer and composer Jean
Baptiste Lully (Giovanni Baptista Lully - 1632-1687)
after the bankruptcy of its founders, King
Louis XIV (1638-1715). Italian opera, the
pastoral, French classical tragedy, and the ballet de cour (a
ballet) were the antecedents of French opera. Lully introduced
his audience to grand-scale entertainment: lavish stage settings
and scenery in addition to Ballets
, choruses, and long disquisition's on love and glory. His operas
were divided into five acts and a prologue. The operas of the French
composer Jean Fillip Ramie (1683-1764) repeated
on this tradition established by Lully, but were not very well received.
Suite:
in music, an instrumental form derived from dance and
consisting of a series of movements usually in the same key but
contrasting in rhythm and mood. The principle of the suite can be
seen in the playing together of two dances in contrasting meters,
e.g., Paean and Mallard
or passamezzo-Saltarello
in the 16th century. In France and Italy there developed sophisticated
techniques for linking dances together, which were adopted by German
musicians in the early 17th century. As the connection with actual
dancing disappeared, the baroque suite evolved. In Germany the suites
of Johann Jakob Froberger established the basic
group of movements as Allemande
, Courante
, and Sarabande
, with a Gigue often
being played. The late baroque suite or overtures, e.g., the partitas
of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750,) frequently
had an introductory movement and one or more dances such as the
Minuet , Bourrée
, Gavotte , Passepied
, etc. |
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