LISTENING GUIDE

YUDKMC05_096-118hr 11-01-2007 14:36 Page 114
Student CD
I, 35
Complete CD
I, 35
LISTENING GUIDE
Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1555–1612)
Canzona Duodecimi Toni
114
Date of composition: 1597
Two brass choirs
Duration: 3:53
CHAPTER 5
This work by Giovanni Gabrieli is divided into several sections and contrasts two brass
“choirs,” which are heard in dialogue. As in Josquin’s Pange Lingua Mass, the music is pushed forward
by overlapping cadences, one choir beginning as the previous choir ends. Sometimes the two
choirs play together. The piece features dynamic contrasts of loud and soft, which are characteristic
of late Renaissance and early Baroque music. A special effect involving dynamic contrast is “echo,”
in which the exact repetition of a phrase at a lower volume suggests distance.
The canzona is full of varied rhythmic patterns, but the most pervasive is the “canzona rhythm,”
LONG-short-short (hqq), which you will hear throughout the piece, in fast and slow tempos.
CD TIME LISTEN FOR
Introduction
35 (35) 0:00 Both brass choirs. Fairly slow, medium loud; canzona rhythm is prominent.
Section 1
36 (36) 0:15 Choir I. Faster tempo, same musical motive and rhythm, faster
tempo, homophonic.
0:20 Choir II, growing louder.
Section 2
0:27 Both choirs, loud, featuring flourishes by trumpets in imitation; cadence.
37 (37) 0:43 Second idea, quieter, mostly homophonic, echoes, passages of imitation
between choirs, lively rhythms; cadence.
Section 3
38 (38) 1:26 Third idea, loud, mostly homophonic, echoes, both choirs.
1:43 Trumpet flourishes, cadence.
1:49 Canzona rhythm; close imitation, cadence.
Section 4
39 (39) 2:10 Fourth idea, quiet, canzona rhythm, lots of imitation between choirs,
cadence.
2:35 Multiple echoes, from loud to soft, between choirs; crescendo . . .
3:02 Final idea, both choirs loud, leading to big climax.