Describe your experience listening to the Gradual from The Mass for Christmas Day. Provide a narrative description of your reaction to the piece.

Please respond to the questions below, in 1-2 paragraphs each. These questions are intended to help you listen and reflect on the music and ideas discussed in class. Be as specific as possible with your answers, citing examples in the music (using time-stamps) and ideas discussed in assigned readings, where indicated.

1. Describe your experience listening to the Gradual from The Mass for Christmas Day. Provide a narrative description of your reaction to the piece. Describe your experience of the work from a more general “birds eye view” perspective, as well as from a more granular, moment to moment, basis. Consider: what aspects of the music caught your attention, how it made you feel, what images it brought to mind and any other responses you may have had. Be creative in your description! Share your own experience as vividly as possible!
2. Drawing on the assigned excerpts from Kelly’s Capturing Music and discussions in lecture, discuss the connection between the development of music notation, the standardization of Gregorian chant, and Charles, King of the Franks (who then became Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor)’s efforts to unify his empire and consolidate power. Cite specific ideas taken from Kelly’s writing using parenthetic citations with page numbers. There is no need to cite information from lecture or lecture slides.
3. Compare/contrast Hildegard’s Spiritui Sancto (responsary) to Tecum Principium (antiphon) and Dixit Dominus (psalm), all of which were used as part of worship in the Divine Office. What are the key differences that you can identify? How might the context of Hildegard’s life explain the uniqueness of her musical style? Cite specific examples in each piece to back up your points, using time-stamps.

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