Ostinato

Ostinato patterns have been present in European music from the Middle Ages onwards. In the famous English canon "Sumer Is Icumen In", the main vocal lines are underpinned by an ostinato pattern, known as a pes:

Sumer is Icumen in

Later in the medieval era, Guillaume Dufay's 15th-century chanson Resvelons Nous features a similarly constructed ostinato pattern, but this time 5 bars long. Over this, the main melodic line moves freely, varying the phrase-lengths, while being "to some extent predetermined by the repeating pattern of the canon in the lower two voices."[8]

Dufay Resvelons nous

Ground bass or basso ostinato (obstinate bass) is a type of variation form in which a bass line, or harmonic pattern (see Chaconne; also common in Elizabethan England as Grounde) is repeated as the basis of a piece underneath variations.[9] Aaron Copland[10] describes basso ostinato as "... the easiest to recognize" of the variation forms wherein, "... a long phrase—either an accompanimental figure or an actual melody—is repeated over and over again in the bass part, while the upper parts proceed normally [with variation]". However, he cautions, "it might more properly be termed a musical device than a musical form."

One striking ostinato instrumental piece of the late Renaissance period is "The Bells", a piece for virginals by William Byrd. Here the ostinato (or 'ground') consists of just two notes:

William Byrd, The Bells

In Italy, during the seventeenth century, Claudio Monteverdi composed many pieces using ostinato patterns in his operas and sacred works. One of these was his 1650 version of "Laetatus sum", an imposing setting of Psalm 122 that pits a four-note "ostinato of unquenchable energy."[11] against both voices and instruments:

Monteverdi Laetatus sum (1650) Ground bass

Later in the same century, Henry Purcell became famous for his skilful deployment of ground bass patterns. His most famous ostinato is the descending chromatic ground bass that underpins the aria "When I am laid in earth" ("Dido's Lament") at the end of his opera Dido and Aeneas:

Purcell, Dido's Lament ground bass

While the use of a descending chromatic scale to express pathos was fairly common at the end of the seventeenth century, Richard Taruskin pointed out that Purcell shows a fresh approach to this musical trope: "Altogether unconventional and characteristic, however, is the interpolation of an additional cadential measure into the stereotyped ground, increasing its length from a routine four to a haunting five bars, against which the vocal line, with its despondent refrain ("Remember me!"), is deployed with marked asymmetry. That, in addition to Purcell's distinctively dissonant, suspension-saturated harmony, enhanced by additional chromatic descents during the final ritornello and by many deceptive cadences, makes this little aria an unforgettably poignant embodiment of heartache."[12] See also: Lament bass. However, this is not the only ostinato pattern that Purcell uses in the opera. Dido's opening aria "Ah, Belinda" is a further demonstration of Purcell's technical mastery: the phrases of the vocal line do not always coincide with the four-bar ground:

Dido's opening aria "Ah! Belinda"

"Purcell's compositions over a ground vary in their working out, and the repetition never becomes a restriction."[13] Purcell's instrumental music also featured ground patterns. A particularly fine and complex example is his Fantasia upon a Ground for three violins and continuo:

Purcell Fantasia in 3 parts to a ground

The intervals in the above pattern are found in many works of the Baroque Period. Pachelbel's Canon also uses a similar sequence of notes in the bass part:

Ground bass of Pachelbel's Canon

Two pieces by J.S.Bach are particularly striking for their use of an ostinato bass: the Crucifixus from his Mass in B minor and the Passacaglia in C minor for organ, which has a ground rich in melodic intervals:

Bach C minor Passacaglia ground bass

The first variation that Bach builds over this ostinato consists of a gently syncopated motif in the upper voices:

Bach C minor Passacaglia Variation 1

This characteristic rhythmic pattern continues in the second variation, but with some engaging harmonic subtleties, especially in the second bar, where an unexpected chord creates a passing implication of a related key:

Bach C minor Passacaglia Variation 2

In common with other Passacaglias of the era, the ostinato is not simply confined to the bass, but rises to the uppermost part later in the piece:

Bach C minor Passacaglia with ostinato in treble

A performance of the entire piece can be heard here.

Ostinatos feature in many works of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mozart uses an ostinato phrase throughout the big scene that ends Act 2 of the Marriage of Figaro, to convey a sense of suspense as the jealous Count Almaviva tries in vain to incriminate the Countess, his wife, and Figaro, his butler, for plotting behind his back. A famous type of ostinato, called the Rossini crescendo, owes its name to a crescendo that underlies a persistent musical pattern, which usually culminates in a solo vocal cadenza.

In the energetic Scherzo of Beethoven’s late C sharp minor Quartet, Op. 131, there is a harmonically static passage, with "the repetitiveness of a nursery rhyme"[14] that consists of an ostinato shared between viola and cello supporting a melody in octaves in the first and second violins:

Beethoven Op 131 Trio from Scherzo, bars 69–76

Beethoven reverses this relationship a few bars later with the melody in the viola and cello and the ostinato shared between the violins:

Beethoven Op 131 Trio from Scherzo, bars 93–100

Both the first and third acts of Wagner's final opera Parsifal feature a passage accompanying a scene where a band of Knights solemnly processes from the depths of forest to the hall of the Grail. The "Transformation music" that supports this change of scene is dominated by the iterated tolling of four bells:

Wagner, Parsifal Act 1, transformation music

Brahms used ostinato patterns in both the finale of his Fourth Symphony and in the closing section of his Variations on a Theme by Haydn:

Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn, final section with ground bass

Debussy featured an ostinato pattern throughout his Piano Prelude "Des pas sur la neige". Here, the ostinato pattern stays in the middle register of the piano – it is never used as a bass. "Remark that the footfall ostinato remains nearly throughout on the same notes, at the same pitch level... this piece is an appeal to the basic loneliness of all human beings, oft-forgotten perhaps, but, like the ostinato, forming a basic undercurrent of our history."[15]

Debussy, Des pas sur la neige

Of all the major classical composers of the 20th century, Stravinsky is possibly the one most associated with the practice of ostinato. In conversation with the composer, his friend and colleague Robert Craft remarked "Your music always has an element of repetition, of ostinato. What is the function of ostinato?" Stravinsky replied; "It is static – that is, anti-development; and sometimes we need a contradiction to development."[16] Stravinsky was particularly skilled at using ostinatos to confound rather than confirm rhythmic expectations. In the first of his Three Pieces for String Quartet, Stravinsky sets up three repeated patterns, which overlap one another and never coincide. "Here a rigid pattern of (3+2+2/4) bars is laid over a strictly recurring 23-beat tune (the bars being marked by a cello ostinato), so that their changing relationship is governed primarily by the pre-compositional scheme."[17] "The rhythmical current running through the music is what binds together these curious mosaic-like pieces."[18]

A subtler metrical conflict can be found in the final section of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. The choir sing a melody in triple time, while the bass instruments in the orchestra play a 4-beat ostinato against this. "This is built up over an ostinato bass (harp, two pianos and timpani) moving in fourths like a pendulum."[19]

Many instruments south of the Sahara Desert play ostinato melodies. These include lamellophones such as the mbira, as well as xylophones like the balafon, the bikutsi, and the gyil. Ostinato figures are also played on string instruments such as the kora, gankoqui bell ensembles, and pitched drums ensembles. Often, African ostinatos contain offbeats or cross-beats, that contradict the metric structure.[20] Other African ostinatos generate complete cross-rhythms by sounding both the main beats and cross-beats. In the following example, a gyil sounds the three-against-two cross-rhythm (hemiola). The left hand (lower notes) sounds the two main beats, while the right hand (upper notes) sounds the three cross-beats.[21]

Ghanaian gyil cross-rhythmic ostinato Play^ⓘ

Popular dance bands in West Africa and the Congo region feature ostinato-playing guitars. The African guitar parts are drawn from a variety of sources, including the indigenous mbira, as well as foreign influences such as James Brown-type funk riffs. However, the foreign influences are interpreted through a distinctly African ostinato sensibility. African guitar styles began with Congolese bands doing Cuban cover songs. The Cuban guajeo had a both familiar and exotic quality to the African musicians. Gradually, various regional guitar styles emerged, as indigenous influences became increasingly dominant within these Africanized guajeos.[22]

As Moore states, "One could say that I – IV – V – IV [chord progressions] is to African music what the 12-bar blues is to North American music."[23] Such progressions seem superficially to follow the conventions of Western music theory. However, performers of African popular music do not perceive these progressions in the same way. Harmonic progressions which move from the tonic to the subdominant (as they are known in European music) have been used in Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony for hundreds of years. Their elaborations follow all the conventions of traditional African harmonic principles. Gehard Kubik concludes:

The harmonic cycle of C–F–G–F [I–IV–V–IV] prominent in Congo/Zaire popular music simply cannot be defined as a progression from tonic to subdominant to dominant and back to subdominant (on which it ends) because in the performer's appreciation they are of equal status, and not in any hierarchical order as in Western music—(Kubik 1999).[24]

In jazz, fusion, and related genres, a background vamp provides a performer with a harmonic framework supporting improvisation. In Latin jazz guajeos fulfill the role of piano vamp. A vamp at the beginning of a jazz tune may act as a springboard to the main tune; a vamp at the end of a song is often called a tag.

"Take Five" begins with a repeated, syncopated figure in ⁵
₄ time, which pianist Dave Brubeck plays throughout the song (except for Joe Morello's drum solo and a variation on the chords in the middle section).

The music from Miles Davis's modal period (c.1958–1963) was based on improvising songs with a small number of chords. The jazz standard "So What" uses a vamp in the two-note "Sooooo what?" figure, regularly played by the piano and the trumpet throughout. Jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld calls this music vamp music.

Examples include the outros to George Benson's "Body Talk" and "Plum", and the solo changes to "Breezin'".[31] The following songs are dominated by vamps: John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green's versions of "My Favorite Things", Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man" and "Chameleon", Wes Montgomery's "Bumpin' on Sunset", and Larry Carlton's "Room 335".[31]

The Afro-Cuban vamp style known as guajeo is used in the bebop/Latin jazz standard "A Night in Tunisia". Depending upon the musician, a repeating figure in "A Night in Tunisia" could be called an ostinato, guajeo, riff, or vamp. The Cuban-jazz hybrid spans the disciplines that encompass all these terms.

In gospel and soul music, the band often vamps on a simple ostinato groove at the end of a song, usually over a single chord. In soul music, the end of recorded songs often contains a display of vocal effects—such as rapid scales, arpeggios, and improvised passages. For recordings, sound engineers gradually fade out the vamp section at the end of a song, to transition to the next track on the album. Salsoul singers such as Loleatta Holloway have become notable for their vocal improvisations at the end of songs, and they are sampled and used in other songs. Andrae Crouch extended the use of vamps in gospel, introducing chain vamps (one vamp after the other, each successive vamp drawn from the first).[34]

1970s-era funk music often takes a short one or two bar musical figure based on a single chord one would consider an introduction vamp in jazz or soul music, and then uses this vamp as the basis of the entire song ("Funky Drummer" by James Brown, for example). Jazz, blues, and rock are almost always based on chord progressions (a sequence of changing chords), and they use the changing harmony to build tension and sustain listener interest. Unlike these music genres, funk is based on the rhythmic groove of the percussion, rhythm section instruments, and a deep electric bass line, usually all over a single chord. "In funk, harmony is often second to the 'lock,' the linking of contrapuntal parts that are played on guitar, bass, and drums in the repeating vamp."[31]

Examples include Stevie Wonder's vamp-based "Superstition"[31] and Little Johnny Taylor's "Part Time Love", which features an extended improvisation over a two-chord vamp.[34]

In musical theater, a vamp, or intro, is the few bars, one to eight, of music without lyrics that begin a printed copy of a song.[35] The orchestra may repeat the vamp or other accompaniment during dialogue or stage business, as accompaniment for onstage transitions of indeterminate length. The score provides a one or two bar vamp figure, and indicates, "Vamp till cue", by the conductor. The vamp gives the onstage singers time to prepare for the song or the next verse, without requiring the music to pause. Once the vamp section is over, the music continues to the next section.

The vamp may be written by the composer of the song, a copyist employed by the publisher, or the arranger for the vocalist.[35] The vamp serves three main purposes: it provides the key, establishes the tempo, and provides emotional context.[36] The vamp may be as short as a bell tone, sting (a harmonized bell tone with stress on the starting note), or measures long.[36] The rideout is the transitional music that begins on the downbeat of the last word of the song and is usually two to four bars long, though it may be as short as a sting or as long as a Roxy Rideout.[37]