Question

Music has been described as the ordering of sound in time. Composers have shaped music into countless forms, many of which have endured for hundreds of years, such as the symphony or the string quartet. Compare and contrast TWO musical forms in detail from the list below. Circle your choice.

Be sure to include in your discussion:
1. Defining characteristics of these forms
2. When in musical history these forms developed and how they have evolved
3. Major composers who wrote in these styles.
Possible Choices:
1. Mass vs. Madrigal
2. Opera vs. Symphony
3. Sonata vs. Song Cycle
APEX Music Appreciation
Please help me, this is the only one that has me stuck.

Answer 1

umm I know a website Google?

Answer 2

I will compare option 1: Mass vs Madrigal

The main difference between both is: while Mass compositions were, as the name commands, created for religious purposes, the Madrigal was a profane form of music.

Step-by-step explanation:

Masses: they were the main form of composition during the medieval age and saw their most complex compositions during the Renaissance.

they consist of six sections:

1. Kyrie (first movement) usually a repetition of Kýrie eléison; Christé eléison; Kýrie eléison" which means Lord have mercy
2. Gloria
3. Credo (this is the longest one and usually involves the mass congregation to sing along in a group)
4. Sanctus
5. Benedictus
6. Agnus Dei

Since the church was in a position of power, they were the ones that sponsored composers to write this pieces. At first, religious music was Gregorian chants, but as polyphony (music that has several independent voices singing together) developed, new forms of music were created. The first mass written fully by only one composer was the Messe de Notre Dame, dated 1365. Many famous composers wrote masses, for example: Henry Purcell, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Giuseppe Verdi and Johannes Brahms. Nowadays we can find diverse approaches to mass compositions, such as the argentine Misa Criolla, a folkloric pice written by Ariel Ramírez in 1964.

Madrigals, on the other hand, were secular pieces that were first written during the Renaissance and the early Baroque. They talked about social themes, love, humor, or even hate, grief, or fear. Madrigals were stories told on vernacular languages (while masses were always in Latin). They used 'madrigalisms', which are different techniques that illustrate and emphasize the meaning of a word in order to make it clearer. Polyphony on this pieces also included dissonance —which wasn't explored as much on masses—.

The first madrigals were written in Florence, and then expanded to the rest of Europe (Spain, England). The first book of madrigals was the Madrigali de diversi musici: libro primo de la Serena written by Philippe Verdelot, and published in 1530 in Rome.