The Madrigal Singers

http://www.upd.edu.ph/~music/new_acad_performing_madrigal.htm

The Philippine Madrigal Singers is the most awarded and acclaimed choir in Asia,
having consistently won all the prizes in the most prestigious choral competitions for
many years. Because of their impressive track record and musical virtuosity, the
Philipppine Madrigal Singers is now regarded as the one of the world's best choirs.

The group performs a variety of styles and forms but specializes in the madrigal, a
polyphonic and challenging musical style popular during the Renaissance where singers
and guests would gather around the table during a banquet to sight-sing and make
music together. This served as the inspiration for their unique style of singing - singing in
a semi-circle without a conductor.

The influence of the Madrigal Singers on the Philippine and Asian choral scene has
been far-reaching. It has graduated more than 200 choral and vocal pedagogues from its
ranks, actively involved in organizing and conducting choirs. Its corps of composers and
choral arrangers continue to produce new compositions and choral settings of Philippine
and Asian songs, thus contributing to the growth of choral literature in Asia. The Singers
maintain an active concert tour schedule, averaging two concert tours a year. Their
outreach concert tours take them to far-flung areas of the Philippines, seldom reached
by choral artists.

In June 1997, the Philippine Madrigal Singers came home from their ninth world concert
tour, winning the grand prize in the Grand Prix European de Chant Choral Competition in
Tours, France, besting the five other grand prize winners of the most prestigious choral
competition in Europe: Guido d'Arezzo, Italy; Debrecen, Hungary; Varna, Bulgaria;
Gorizia, Italy; and Tolosa, Spain.

The Madrigal Singers first earned critical acclaim during their performance in the First
Choruses of the World Festival at the Lincoln Center in New York in 1969. This concert
welcomed them to the international choral community, eventually paving the way to
joining the most distinguished international choral competitions - Spittal, Austria; Arezzo
and Gorizia, Italy; Neuchatel, Switzerland; Debrecen, Hungary; Varna, Bulgaria; Tolosa,
Spain; and Marktoberdorf in Germany, and winning all the top prizes.

The Philippine Madrigal Singers was organized as the University of the Philippines
Madrigal Singers in 1963 by Prof. Andrea Veneracion, proclaimed National Artist for
Music in 1999. The group is composed of students, faculty and alumni from the different
colleges of the University of the Philippines. Its present choirmaster since 2001 is Mark
Anthony Carpio.
School of Notre Dame

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_school

The group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from
about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre
Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony.

The only composers whose names have come down to us from this time are Léonin and
Pérotin. Both were mentioned by an anonymous English student, known as Anonymous
IV, who was either working or studying at Notre Dame later in the 13th century. In
addition to naming the two composers as "the best composers of organum," and
specifying that they compiled the big book of organum known as the Magnus Liber
Organi, he provides a few tantalizing bits of information on the music and the principles
involved in its composition. Pérotin is the first composer of organum quadruplum — four-
voice polyphony — at least the first composer whose music has survived, since
complete survivals of notated music from this time are scarce.

Léonin, Pérotin and the other anonymous composers whose music has survived are
representatives of the era of European music history known as the ars antiqua. The
motet was first developed during this period out of the clausula, which is one of the most
frequently encountered types of composition in the Magnus Liber Organi.

While music with notation has survived, in substantial quantity, the interpretation of this
music, especially with regard to rhythm, remains controversial. Three music theorists
describe the contemporary practice: Johannes de Garlandia, Franco of Cologne, and
Anonymous IV; however they were all writing more than two generations after the music
was written, and may have been imposing their current practice, which was quickly
evolving, on music which was conceived differently. In much music of the Notre Dame
School the lowest voices sings long note values while the upper voice or voices sing
highly ornamented lines, which often use repeating patterns of long and short notes
known as the "rhythmic modes." This marked the beginning of notation capable of
showing relative durations of notes within and between parts (Hoppin 1978, p. 221).

Popular Entertainment forms of Music

1. Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular

between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:

♫A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular

song, comedy and speciality acts. British music hall was similar to American
vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United
Kingdom the term vaudeville referred to more working-class types of
entertainment that would have been termed burlesque.

♫The theatre or other venue in which such entertainment takes place;

 ♫The type of popular music normally associated with such performances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_hall

2. The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment

consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed
by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black
people in blackface. Blackface branched off from the minstrel show.

Minstrel shows lampooned black people as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish,

superstitious, joyous, and musical.[citation needed] The minstrel show began
with brief burlesques and comic entr'actes in the early 1830s and
emerged as a full-fledged form in the next decade. In 1848, blackface
minstrel shows were the national art of the time, translating formal art
such as opera into popular terms for a general audience.[1] By the turn
of the century, the minstrel show enjoyed but a shadow of its former
popularity, having been replaced for the most part by vaudeville. It
survived as professional entertainment until about 1910; amateur
performances continued until the 1960s in high schools, fraternities,
and local theaters. As blacks began to score legal and social victories
against racism and to successfully assert political power, minstrelsy
lost popularity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minstrel_show

3. Burlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and

sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form
became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief
attraction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlesque

4. Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United

States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each
performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts
grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts included popular
and classical musicians, dancers, comedians, trained animals,
magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated
songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing
celebrities, minstrels, and movies. Vaudeville developed from many
sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime
museums, and literary burlesque. Called "the heart of American show
business," vaudeville was one of the most popular types of
entertainment in North America for several decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville