Music in The Renaissance (1450-1600)

Renaissance Means…

Rebirth

Chief characteristics of the beginning of this period in the history of Western Europe was a

sharpening of interest in learning and culture centering particularly on many of the ideas expressed

of what was known by the ancient Greeks and Romans

It was also a great age of change, exploration and discovery (Fall of Constantinople in 1453,

Discovery of Americas 1492, Guttenberg Printing The Bible 1456), and great advances in science and

astronomy

Man also explored the mysteries of the human spirit and emotions in more depths, developing a

keener awareness both of himself and of the world about him, beginning to reason things out for

himself more openly

These factors of course had great impact upon painters (Boticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bosch),

architects (Da Vinci), writers (Cervantes, Shakespeare), philosophers (Machiavelli, Montaigne, Bacon,

Érasme, Luther), and our favorite topic, composers…

Composers…

Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474)

Johannes Ockeghem (1425-1497)

Josquin des Prez (1440-1521)

Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)

Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594)

William Byrd (1543-1594)

Thomas Morley (1557-1602)

Jacopo Peri (1561-1633)

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)

Renaissance also Means…

Due to the lost of power of the church and the new humanistic ideas, musical

activity gradually shifted from the church to the court

Education was considered a status symbol by aristocrats and the upper middle

class. Also, every educated person was expected to be trained in music

Catholic Church is less powerful than during Middle Ages – partly due to Martin

Luther’s Protestant Reformation

More books are printed in Europe

Renaissance town musicians: higher pay and status

Flemish composers: parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France.

Germany, England and Spain – other countries with a vibrant musical life

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Words and Music

Vocal music is still more important than instrumental

Music enhances the meaning and emotion of the text.

Word painting: musical representation of specific poetic images

Moderate, balanced way of expression: no extreme contrasts of

dynamics, tone color or rhythm

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Texture

Chiefly polyphonic. 4, 5 or 6 voice parts with equal melodic interest

Imitation is common

Homophonic texture is also used

Fuller sound than medieval: bass register

Mild and relaxed: consonant chords.

Golden age of a cappella

Composers considered the harmonic effect of chords rather than

superimposing one melody above another

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Rhythm and Melody

Rhythm is a gentle flow: Each melodic line has great rhythmic

independence

Melody usually moves along a scale with few large leaps

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Imitation

The key device used by composers to weave this kind of texture is called imitation.

One voice-part introduces a snatch of tune, then is immediately imitated, or copied,

by another voice-part (Thomas Morley’s piece is an example of this new texture).

At phrase-endings where the music might come to rest and the flow be broken, the

composer often introduced fresh imitation. While a chord is held at the end of a

phrase, one of the voice-parts sets off with a new tuneful idea, soon imitated again.

In this way, the composer overlapped the strands of his texture and created a

continuous, seamless musical flow.

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Harmony

Although, as we listen to this music, the weaving of the polyphony is

the most important aspect, the Renaissance composer was becoming

increasingly aware of harmony – the vertical framework of the chords

which support the horizontal weaving of the counterpoint.

He therefore became especially concerned with the treatment of

discords.

All this led to a much wider range of expression.

Church Music

Renaissance composers began to take a keener interest in writing

secular music, including music for instruments independent of voices.

Even so, the greatest musical treasures of the Renaissance were

composed for the church.

The style of Renaissance church music is described as ‘choral

polyphony’ – contrapuntal music for one or more choirs, with several

singers to each voice-part.

Much of this music was intended to be sung a capella (for the chapel).

Church Music: Motets and Masses

Motet

A polyphonic vocal style of composition.

The motet was popular in the middle ages, when it

consisted of a tenor foundation upon which other tunes were

added

Polyphonic choral work set to sacred Latin text other than

the ordinary of the mass

The texts of these voices could be sacred or secular, Latin

or French, and usually had little to do with each other, with

the result that the composition lacked unity and direction

By the Renaissance, the separate voices of the motet had

adopted the same text (by this time the texts were religious

almost without exception) and each voice was considered a

part of the whole rather than a whole in itself, thus finally

giving the motet unity and grace

Mass

Mass – polyphonic choral work with

5 sections: Kyrie Gloria Credo Sanctus Agnus Dei

Church Music: Motets and Masses

The main forms of church music were still the mass and the motet.

These were now written in at least four part voice-parts as composers

began to explore the pitch-range below the tenor by writing a part we

now call ‘bass’, creating a fuller, richer texture.

Indeed, one of the most noticeable differences between Medieval and

Renaissance styles is that of musical texture.

Instead of building up the texture layer after layer, the composer

worked gradually through the piece, attending to all voice-parts

simultaneously in a continuous web of polyphony.

The Netherlands and Italy

A curious fact about music in the Renaissance is that, though Italy and

England were to eventually become the most important musical

centers, composers who took the lead in almost every direction came

from the Netherlands.

Many of these composers settled n other countries, particularly Italy,

taking up important positions and strongly influencing the music of

native composers.

• From Belgium, contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Columbus• Spent most of his life in Italy• Described as ‘The Prince of Music’• Admired for the deeply emotional quality of his music• His compositions strongly influenced other composers, and were

enthusiastically praised by music lovers• He wrote masses, motets, and secular vocal pieces as well

Let’s listen to his motet, Absalon fili, a dark-colored setting of King David’s lament upon the death of his treacherous son, Absalom (as told in the Bible)…

Josquin des Prez (1440-1521)

• Choral music peaked in beauty and expressiveness during the 2nd half of the 16th century in the music of Palestrina.

• Composed 104 masses and some 450 other sacred works• For centuries, his masses are regarded as models of church music• Career centered in Rome• His ‘Pope Marcellus Mass’ (c.1563) sounds fuller than Josquin des

Prez’s mass (1504) because it is set for six voices instead of four• SATTBB

• The opening of the Agnus Dei has a calm, serene beauty

• Palestrina smoothly waves a six voice counterpoint into a continuous, flowing texture.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

The Council of Trent attacked the church music of the Renaissance because it used secular tunes, noisy instruments, and theatrical singing. As a result of the deliberations of the Council of Trent, an attempt was made to purify Catholic Church music

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)

German Chorales

Protestant Church led by Martin Luther was seeking ways of bringing

its people into a more direct contact with God

A new tradition of writing hymns in German was born

They were sometimes newly composed, some adaptations or

translations of existing tunes

They named them ‘chorale’

Secular Music for Voices

A rich flowering of secular songs soon followed all over Europe –

varied in style and expressing every kind of mood and emotion:

Italian frottola, German lied, Spanish villancico, French chanson, and

most importantly, the Italian madrigal.

The madrigal originated in Italy around 1520 and became highly

popular in England

English madrigals are lighter and more humorous than Italian ones

Elizabethan Madrigals

In 1588, a collection of Italian madrigals with English words was

published in England.

This sparked off great enthusiasm, and soon English composers were

writing their own madrigals which were performed in the homes of

keen music lovers everywhere.

In England, three kinds of madrigals emerged: the madrigal proper, the

ballett, and the ayre.

Madrigal Proper

The madrigal is a piece for several solo voices set to a short poem,

usually about love

It combines homophonic and polyphonic textures

Usually very contrapuntal, with much use of imitation, making all the

voices equally important

Words and music are closely matched, introducing word-painting,

which are vivid illustrations of the meaning of certain words

Word-painting

Late Renaissance composers were concerned with matching text with

music in such a way that the latter could be said to express the former.

Madrigalists used a declamation technique known as word painting to

make musical notes illustrate word meanings, trying literally to paint

visual images with sonic materials.

Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)

Organist and Church composer

One of the greatest Elizabethan madrigals composers

"As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending" (1603) was written for six

solo voices.

It uses word painting throughout to declaim textual meaning

As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending

mm 1-9: "Latmos hill" - "hill" is always set with the highest note in the phrase

mm 8-9: "descending" - uses descending scales and leaps

mm 12-22: "ascending" - uses ascending scales

mm 36-46: "running down the hill" - uses quickly descending scales in imitative

polyphony

mm 48-49: "two by two" - two voices sing

mm 50-51: "three by three" - three voices sing

mm 51-52: "together" - all six voices sing

mm 56-57: "all alone" - top voice sings alone

mm 84-100: "Long live fair Oriana" - low voice begins with longa, continues with long,

sustained notes

A simpler type of secular vocal music, lighter in style than the proper madrigal

A dance-like song for several voices Has a clear-cut, dance-like rhythm Texture is mainly chordal (therefore much less imitation) Most noticeable feature of a ballett is the fa-la-la refrain

which is heard at section endings Now Is the Month of Maying (1595) by English composer

Thomas Morley (1557-1603)

The Ballett

An ayre could be performed in a variety of ways: by a solo voice accompanied by other instruments or with all the parts sung by voices

The greatest composer of Ayres was John Dowland (1563-1626), who was also an expert lute-player famous throughout the courts of all Europe

Flow my Teares…

The Ayre

The Venetian School: from Renaissance to Baroque

Becoming a center of instrumental and vocal music

At St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice, there were 2 organ lofts and choir galleries set high up on opposite sides of the building

This gave composers the opportunity of writing for two separate choirs.

Giovanni Gabrieli (1555-1612) and the polychoral motet

Pieces in this style are described as Polychoral – music for more than one choir (and often with instrumentalists)

Having established a better purpose for instruments, Venetian composers became very fond of using them with voices in their church music, they would match them in varied groups for texture and timbre effects.

The texture of this polychoral music is a mixture of chordal style and imitative counterpoint, a blending of sounds within the groups, but contrasts of various kinds between the groups as well (in pitch, dynamics, texture, timbre); think of the effect being somewhat synonymous with a stereo recording

Gabrieli is the most important Venetian composer of the late Renaissance before Monteverdi

Plaudite (Clap Your Hands), 1597. Written for a large vocal and instrumental ensemble of 12 voice parts divided into 3 choirs: low, middle and high register choirs

Music for Instruments

Until the 16th century, instruments were considered to be far less important than the voices.

They were used for dances, of course, and to accompany vocal music – but only to double the voices, or play chords, or take over voice-parts of an absent, unavailable singer

During the 16th century however, composers took greater interest in writing music specially intended for instruments only – not only dances, but pieces purely for playing and listening

English Consorts

Many instruments such as recorders, viols, shawms and crumhorns were made into families – the same type of instrument in different sizes to have a variety of pitch-ranges but a blending of tone within each family.

Elizabethans called a group of instruments playing together a consort (similar in meaning to concert)

Instruments from one family only – recorders, or viols – made up a whole consort; a broken consort was a mixture of instruments from different families (so that the sameness of sound was ‘broken’)

Keyboard Music

In many households, besides recorders, lutes and viols, there would be a keyboard instrument such as the chamber organ, the clavichord, or most popular of all, the virginals.

The virginal was a simple type of harpsichord with a single string to each note.

Most composers wrote pieces for virginals and soon discovered an effective keyboard style well suited to the instrument – spread chords and crisp decorations, scales and running passages.

All styles of the times were adapted onto the virginal (and other similar keyboard instruments), opening to a whole new universe of possibilities…

Main Characteristics of Medieval Music

Monophonic textures: plainsongPolyphonic textures: organum – elaboration of existing

plainchants composed by adding successive layers of melody and words

Ars Antiqua rhythms based on regular poetry patternsArs Nova rhythms more flexible and adventurousA tendency to contrast sounds rather than blend them together

Main Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Accidentals are slowly creeping inRicher, fuller texture in four or more voice-partsBlending rather than contrasting musical texturesHarmony: a great concern with the flow and progression of

chordsChurch music: some pieces intended for a cappella performace,

mainly contrapuntal with much imitation to create flowing seamless texture

Church music: other pieces accompanied by instrumentsSecular music: rich variety of vocal piecesThe birth of forming instrument families