Final week

I feel that my paper was definitely not long enough.  I could have made this paper a lot better than it was.  I was able to provide a lot of information about my piece, along with a detailed biography of the composer and my personal feelings on the piece.  But I still feel that if I could have found more valuable sources, I would've been able to write a longer, more detailed paper.  It was the best I could do with what I had, and I'm happy with that.  If I could go back to the beginning and pick another piece, I probably would.  but hindsight being 20-20, I really enjoyed listening to my piece and developing my own ideas about it and discovering about the composer's ideas.  I had a great semester and a lot of fun in this class.  I feel I have grown a lot as a writer and as a student in general.

In conclusion, the motet, “O Magnum Mysterium,” is a great example of liturgical polyphony from the sixteenth century.  Victoria has such a talent to blend music and text, to evoke the presence of God.  He used polyphony for spiritual sections of the song, while he applied homophony to points where the text was most important.  He made sure that the liturgical text was the most important part to bring forth the glory of God.  His style is different from that of its beginnings in the thirteenth century.  For example, the early motet had either two or three voices, while the motets of this period usually had four.  Another difference is the text being used in “O Magnum Mysterium” is the same throughout the voices, while the motets of the thirteenth century had multiple lines of text, which could have all been in different languages.  Another thing that separates this motet from its predecessors is that it is entirely liturgical and has no secular text or meanings.  This helps polyphony maintain its importance in the Catholic Church.  This piece gives the listener that feeling of divine influence as the music just flows over them.   The imagery of the infant Jesus Christ, the blessed virgin Mary, and the great mystery and power of God.  The rise and fall of the text painting, the switch between homophony and polyphony, the change of polyrhythm and homo-rhythm, and the multiple meter shifts all give “O Magnum Mysterium” its unique qualities such as the leap of a fifth with the resolution of the semi-tone, and the way Victoria could bring about such spirituality in his music, that have given it a place among one of the more beautiful motets in history. (Harmon)

"O Magnum Mysterium"

O Magnum Mysterium, a motet by Tomas Luis De Victoria, was composed in 1570.  This liturgical piece is about the great mystery that is God and the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ. Written for the feast of circumcision, it differs from that of the original motet design, but still maintains a lot of the same characteristics.  Victoria uses his music to create a near religious experience by emphasizing points in the text either melodically or rhythmically. (Harmon)

week10

1. I'm feeling like I can't get enough sources for this project.  all i can really talk about is what i think of the music other than the history behind the genre and the composer.  There are many different songs that have the title "O Magnum Mysterium" but all of the sources i find are about other composers' works.  I feel i may have made a mistake choosing this topic to write on, but I've already put this time into it and it's stressing me out.  I think that my piece of music is still beautiful and it is still inspiring to listen to, but i feel there's not much I can talk about.  I don't even know what I want to prove in my paper.  I'm just trying to find out all I can before the rough draft is due.

2. I don't even have a thesis statement to find holes in.  I feel I'm pretty unprepared for this paper due to lack of sources with enough information or analysis on my piece.  I'm honestly just trying to make this paper happen, and it doesn't seem to be going too well.  If I could find sources that help me other than a biography of the composer and descriptions of my piece from the textbook, I feel i could write a semi decent paper which would be long enough.  I feel that I should have picked a piece with a less common name, and a composer that may have had a greater impact on the musical genre of which he was proficient.

Tomas Luis De Victoria uses imitative polyphony based on a melody in the first nine measures.  It begins in the Cantus voice, leaping a 5^th down and then returning to the starting pitch.  It mostly moves in stepwise motion with three more leaps, two of a 4^th and one of a 3^rd.  Whenever the text says ‘magnum,’ the voice either leaps up or down by a 5^th.  Then on the word mysterium, Victoria moves either up or down by a semitone.  Victoria uses text painting on the large leap of the 5^th represents magnum (large or big) and on the resolution of a semitone depicts a sense of mystery.  The melody continues in the Altus and is imitated a fifth below the original line six beats later.   Victoria creates a nice thick texture through the piece by shifting the original melody between voices.  He takes out voices creating points where the texture becomes thinner, but then adds voices back into the piece returning it to a thicker texture.  In measure 38, there is silence for beats three and four in all four voices.  Then in measure 39, all 4 voices exclaim in homo-rhythm (which makes the statement louder and stronger), “O Beata Virgo!” which means, “Oh blessed virgin!” On the text, “virgin,” the outer voices have syncopation and eighth note runs, ornamenting the word virgin making it sound more elegant and beautiful.  Victoria uses homo-rhythm in the last section of the piece when the text repeats “Alleluia” until the conclusion of the piece. This section Starts in a triple meter, but is imitated in later measures in duple meter.  The piece ends with a Picardy third resolving from a minor key to a major key.  

In “O Magnum Mysterium,” Tomas Luis De Victoria Primarily uses Polyphonic texture.  The genre of this piece is a motet.  Motets usually have three or four voices; each one with its own distinct melody on either the same text or different text.  The beginning of the piece is fugal where the melody begins in measure 1 but is followed by the next voice six beats later but a perfect 5^th below the original melody.  This piece can be analyzed with common practices because it’s entirely tonal.  Sometimes in this piece, the voices break the rules of common practices, by allowing parallel 5ths and octaves.  This is characteristic of the time period where Polyphony was still the most common style of composing.  When the piece becomes homo-rhythmic, the chords feel much stronger and the polyphony is much more present.  The Bass is the most prominent voice in the piece.  It may not be the “main” melody, but it is a solid foundation while also pushing the piece forward.  Although it mainly stays on scale degrees 1 and 5, the bass motion is what fuels the melodic line as the piece cadences.  The way he blends the voices and the harmonies that he creates gives the piece that “spiritual” or “holy” feeling.  The words of this piece would lead one to believe that this piece would be sacred and sung only in the church, but the beauty and style of the polyphony he uses suggests that it may also have been sung secularly at home by the people.

In O Magnum Mysterium, Tomas Luis De Victoria uses basic rhythms (whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes) in various ways to make the music interesting.  There is nothing particularly exceptional about the way he uses these rhythms.  One thing that does capture my attention in this piece is how he layers the rhythms on top of one another.  He tends to switch back and forth between homo-rhythmic passages and poly-rhythmic passages.  He begins the piece with a single voice, and begins the next voice six beats later creating a round or fugal feel.  Then the rhythm becomes homo-rhythmic in the top two voices in measure 9 with the fugue continuing in the third and fourth voices.  All four voices share the same rhythm from measure 20 to measure 25.  The voices all have different rhythms across the score until the fourth beat of measure 39, which then turns back into homo-rhythmic for the next four measures.  When we get to measure 52, there is a meter shift from 4/4 to 3/2.  It stays mostly homo-rhythmic.  At measure 58 there are at least two voices continually moving together until the meter shift back to 4/4 when the voices finish the piece in poly-rhythm.  The one thing that stands out to me the most while listening to this piece is that there is always at least one voice singing a quarter note on each beat.  This gives the piece consistent pulse which provides the feeling of forward motion in the music.  For the period of time in which it was written, I think that this was a fairly standard method of notation which may have helped performers stay in time together without a conductor or a percussionist giving the tempo to the ensemble.  I feel that the meter shifts were the only exceptional or possibly “new” technique used in writing this piece.