A2 Music- Dido and Aeneas
Purcell’s ‘Dido & Aeneas’
Summarise the paragraphs in the square boxes and write your own ideas in the thought bubbles. Highlight any new information you come across, and summarise that in bullet points at the end. You could also add post-it notes with related points about Acis and Galathea around the outside.
BACKGROUND This set work comes from the Baroque Era (c.1600-1750) This period in history witnessed a new exploration of ideas and innovations in the arts, literature and philosophy. Italy was the cultural centre and led the way when it came to exploring and establishing new ideas and fashions. The word ‘baroque’ comes from the Portuguese for ‘pearl’ and was used in reference to the ornate architecture and elaborate gilded paintings, frescoes and designs that adorned the walls of German and Italian churches of the time. One feature that made its way into the music of the Baroque was the emphasis on an ornamented or decorative melodic line and there are many examples of this in the vocal melodies in Dido and Aeneas. The great composers of the Baroque Period were J. S. Bach (1685-1750), G. F. Handel (1685-1759), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695). Dido and Aeneas (1689) is arguably the first ever English opera. However, some scholars argue that the first English work in this genre was ‘The Siege of Rhodes’ (1656), although the music has been lost. ‘Psyche’ (1673) by Thomas Shadwell and Matthew Locke mixes music and spoken dialogue, but the first English Opera in which everything was sung was ‘Venus and Adonis’ by John Blow. This was first performed a few years before Dido and Aeneas. Indeed, Purcell took John Blow’s work as a model for his own opera. Purcell composed his opera to a libretto by Nahum Tate (from a play called The Enchanted Lovers of 1678). The opera was written expressly for a girls’ school in Chelsea in the spring of 1689. This school was run by a dancing teacher called Josias Priest which probably goes some way to
Summarise the paragraphs in the square boxes and write your own ideas in the thought bubbles. Highlight any new information you come across, and summarise that in bullet points at the end. You could also add post-it notes with related points about Acis and Galathea around the outside.
BACKGROUND This set work comes from the Baroque Era (c.1600-1750) This period in history witnessed a new exploration of ideas and innovations in the arts, literature and philosophy. Italy was the cultural centre and led the way when it came to exploring and establishing new ideas and fashions. The word ‘baroque’ comes from the Portuguese for ‘pearl’ and was used in reference to the ornate architecture and elaborate gilded paintings, frescoes and designs that adorned the walls of German and Italian churches of the time. One feature that made its way into the music of the Baroque was the emphasis on an ornamented or decorative melodic line and there are many examples of this in the vocal melodies in Dido and Aeneas. The great composers of the Baroque Period were J. S. Bach (1685-1750), G. F. Handel (1685-1759), Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695). Dido and Aeneas (1689) is arguably the first ever English opera. However, some scholars argue that the first English work in this genre was ‘The Siege of Rhodes’ (1656), although the music has been lost. ‘Psyche’ (1673) by Thomas Shadwell and Matthew Locke mixes music and spoken dialogue, but the first English Opera in which everything was sung was ‘Venus and Adonis’ by John Blow. This was first performed a few years before Dido and Aeneas. Indeed, Purcell took John Blow’s work as a model for his own opera. Purcell composed his opera to a libretto by Nahum Tate (from a play called The Enchanted Lovers of 1678). The opera was written expressly for a girls’ school in Chelsea in the spring of 1689. This school was run by a dancing teacher called Josias Priest which probably goes some way to