Why is religion so closely tied to music concerning vocal pieces of the Baroque era?

I found it interesting that back when Opera’s were at the peak of their popularity the audiences decided to pay attention only when their singers came on to perform.  Is it ironic that at the height of its popularity the audiences sought to appreciate only a particular part of the performance and now when Operas are seen as visiting old art forms the audiences are more captivated by the performances?  It just seems as the interest should be reversed, but then again maybe it is just that people appreciate things less when they do not know how things will be in the future.  Could this be applied to films nowadays and how people go to see their favorite actors?

Okay, wow, I barely understood any of that. The reading contained a lot of technical terms that really didn’t translate to a non-Music major like myself. There’s a lot that apparently is invested into crafting the music for an opera so I’m wondering if this applies to any particular form of music. How much work and study does it take to attain this level of being able to hear, interpret, understand and manipulate music in such a scientific way? Is it relegated to only the opera or does all music require this amount of in-depth understanding and thought? If yes, how and where can I learn this, cause now I feel like such a musical dunce. Also, as someone who just enjoys banging on his bass guitar pointlessly once in a while, I have to wonder if music becomes more of a chore than creative expression when it appears to be so formulaic. At a professional level, can a musician or composer lose their zeal for the art?

If the castrati were so prized and given top biilling, why would most of them be relegated to just singing in churches? Did so many people submit to this practice that there could have even been too many?

• How were the castrati treated in the time period? Were they viewed as “up and coming stars” or as a disgrace to their families?
• In response to Sara Shafers question: Since “actors (or in this case opera singers) usually connect to the audience based on real-life experiences and difficulties that they’ve faced/overcome” why wouldn’t the castrati be able to express their emotions and connect with the audiences? Wouldn’t they be able to connect using the difficulties they had to overcome while becoming a castrato? Ex. Having to castrate himself to do what they love, being rejected by who they love, being scrutinized by those who opposed of what he did.

I found the part about the castrati very disturbing.  Isn’t what they’re doing defeating the purpose of opera and theatre?  Actors usually connect to the audience based on real-life experiences and difficulties that they’ve faced/overcome.  But these are people who have willingly gone through terrible pain just so that they could have high-pitched voices.  It seems wrong, and not at all genuine.

I love music and am currently learning guitar so I found this very interesting and insightful. But to be quite honest, I didn’t really understand the part on musical notation and the shading meant to “indicate[s] passages of rhythm- meter correspondence.”

I seriously never realized how much goes into writing music. But some people are just musical- do they put all this thought into the details or does it just come naturally? “Composers can write cadences with all possible shades of solidarity and finality,” “Composers also take care to make sure some phrases contrast with their neighbors.” There are so many qualifications for good music and I never realized how much of a science it really is. But, for someone who can just write good music, do they think about all this as they’re writing it? Can there be an excellent composer who doesn’t know all this…?

In the reading, the author praises the quality of castrato voice and claims that “the castrato voice…more powerful and brilliant than a woman’s soprano”.  However, can a male spontaneously express a female’s emotion through his singing, since “opera’s ability to project emotion was the real basis of its appeal”?

“The singer would do more than just repeat A. He or she would also ornament the music with improvised runs, cadenzas, and so on, so as to create an exciting enhanced affect the second time around” (141). Can one of the reason that opera projects emotions so well be that the singers themselves are singing what they feel at that moment? They feel as though they are one with the drama unfolding so can the emotions in themselves be what the audience feels so attracted to?

• What effect does the “continuity” of the prelude have on the audience? (pg 5)
• Shout out to Ashley… pg 6 where it talks about musical form. Even a chaotic climax has a clear organization in music.
• Can we talk about the difference between relative duration and absolute duration?
• What is it that allows people to have perfect pitch?
• Is opera always dramatic and serious? Why did it start off as this in the first place?
• How do all the parts of music that we read about work together to portray such intense emotion?
• And weird question… but what came first, the music itself or the parts of music? How is it that a person that has no knowledge of those parts become amazing at it? Can you know the parts inside and out but be musically impaired (from a performance perspective)?