Renaissance Period (c1400-c1600) composers:
Dutch/Franco-Flemish: -Binchois, Clemens, -DUFAY, Gombert, Isaac, JOSQUIN, La Rue,
+LASSO, Obrecht, -Ockeghem, +Sweelinck
English: +Bull, +BYRD, +Campion, +DOWLAND, -Dunstable, +Gibbons, +Morley, Sheppard, +Tallis,
Taverner, +Tomkins, +Weelkes
French: +Janequin
German: +Hassler, +Praetorius, Senfl
Italian: +A Gabrieli, +G GABRIELI, +Gesualdo, +Luzzaschi, +Marenzio, +PALESTRINA, Rore,
+Wert, Willaert
Spanish: Cabezón, +Guerrero, Morales, +VICTORIA
MONTEVERDI: L'Orfeo (1607) . . . The Coronation of Poppea (1642) . . . . .
The western tradition of music has its origins in the chant tradition of the early Christian
era. The monophonic music of chant dominated the middle ages, and included the
composition of sequences and tropes. In the high middle ages, organum emerged, thus
introducing polyphonic textures into liturgical music. By the thirteenth century, the motet
became a seminal polyphonic composition and included liturgical and secular texts as
well as a chant cantus firmus. In the Ars Nova of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
secular music was composed polyphonically, and resulted in elaborate contrapuntal
devices and notational practices.
In the fifteenth century the early Renaissance polyphony showed evidence of a new style
influenced on fauxbourdon and based on previously improvised traditions. At this time
textures grew from a reliance on lower voices to treble-dominated textures. Renaissance
motets and madrigals have their origins in the music of the Netherlands composers
(Obrecht, Ockeghem, Busnois, Binchois) and the idiom culminates in the work of
Josquin Desprez. With the late Renaissance, more national and secular music emerged, as
found with the English madrigal and the French chanson.
The late sixteenth-century music included attempts to return to Greek drama. The latter
resulted in the formulation of monody for declaiming music which was at the core of
early opera (Caccini, Peri) and became a vehicle for composers like Monteverdi to take
forward the nascent genre of opera. Italian opera (opera seria, opera buffa) soon
dominated the early baroque style of the seventeenth century, which extended to the
composition of oratorios on sacred subjects. In France opera soon took root, and a
national style evolved starting with Lully.
The beginnings of Opera
In the last years of the sixteenth century, a group of musicians and literati in Florence, Italy
experimented with a new method of composing dramatic vocal music, modeling their ideas after the
precepts of ancient Greek theater. Their intent was that this new music should prove more direct
and communicative to an audience, as the complex polyphony of the Renaissance could very often
obscure the text being sung. They instead set a single melodic line against a basic chordal
accompaniment, and with this notion of homophony, a new era of music began. The Florentine
Camerata called this new form of musical-dramatic entertainment opera. The first operas were
private affairs, composed for the Italian courts. But when in 1737 the first public opera house
opened in Venice, Italy, opera became a commercial industry, and the genre in which many
composers throughout history first tried out new ideas and new techniques of composition.
Around 500 A.D., western civilization began to emerge from the period known as "The
Dark Ages," the time when invading hordes of Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths overran
Europe and brought an end to the Roman Empire. For the next ten centuries, the newly
emerging Christian Church would dominate Europe, administering justice, instigating
"Holy" Crusades against the East, establishing Universities, and generally dictating the
destiny of music, art and literature. During this time, Pope Gregory I is generally believed
to have collected and codified the music known as Gregorian Chant, which was the
approved music of the Church. Much later, the University at Notre Dame in Paris saw the
creation of a new kind of music called organum. Secular music was sung all over Europe
by the troubadours and trouvères of France. And it was during the Middle Ages that
western culture saw the arrival of the first great name in music, Guillaume de Machaut.
The Middle Ages
The traditions of Western music can be traced back to the social and religious developments that
took place in Europe during the Middle Ages, the years roughly spanning from about 500 to 1400
A.D. Because of the domination of the early Christian Church during this period, sacred music was
the most prevalent. Beginning with Gregorian Chant, church music slowly developed into a
polyphonic music called organum performed at Notre Dame in Paris by the twelfth century. Secular
music flourished, too, in the hands of the French trouvères and troubadours, until the period
culminated with the sacred and secular compositions of the first true genius of Western music,
Guillaume de Machaut.
Music had been a part of the world's civilizations for hundreds of years before the Middle Ages.
Primitive cave drawings, stories from the Bible, and Egyptian heiroglyphs all attest to the fact that
people had created instruments and had been making music for centuries.
The word music derives from the ancient Greek muses, the nine goddesses of art and science. The
first study of music as an art form dates from around 500 B.C., when Pythagoras experimented with
acoustics and the mathematical relationships of tones. In so doing, Pythagoras and others
established the Greek modes: scales comprised of whole tones and half steps.
With the slow emergence of European society from the dark ages between the fall of the Roman
empire and the rise of the Christian Church, dozens of "mini-kingdoms" were established all over
Europe, each presided over by a lord who had fought for and won the land. Mostly through
superstitious fear, the early Church was able to claim absolute power over these feudal lords. The
Church was able to dictate the progress of arts and letters according to its own strictures and
employed all the scribes, musicians and artists. At this time, western music was almost the sole
property of the Christian Church.
Gregorian Chant
Early Christians derived their music from Jewish and Byzantine religious chant. Like all music in the
Western world up to this time, Christian plainchant was monophonic: that is, comprised of a single
melody without any harmonic support or accompaniment. The many hundreds of melodies are
defined by one of the eight Greek modes, some of which sound very different than the major/minor
scales our ears are used to today. The melodies are free and seem to wander, dictated by the Latin
liturgical texts to which they are set. As these chants spread throughout Europe, they were
embellished and developed along many different lines in various regions. It was believed that Pope
Gregory I (reigned 590-604) codified them during the sixth-century, establishing uniform usage
throughout the Western Church. Although his actual contribution to this enormous body of music
remains unknown, his name has been applied to this music, and it is known as Gregorian Chant.
Gregorian chant remains among the most spiritually moving and profound music in western culture.
An idea of its pure, floating melody can be heard in the Easter hymn, Victimae paschali laudes.
Many years later, composers of Renaissance polyphony very often used plainchant melodies as the
basis for their sacred works.
Notre Dame and the Ars Antiqua
Sometime during the ninth century, music theorists in the Church began experimenting with the
idea of singing two melodic lines simultaneously at parallel intervals, usually at the fourth, fifth, or
octave. The resulting hollow-sounding music was called organum and very slowly developed over
the next hundred years. By the eleventh century, one, two (and much later, even three) added
melodic lines were no longer moving in parallel motion, but contrary to each other, sometimes even
crossing. The original chant melody was then sung very slowly on long held notes called the tenor
(from the Latin tenere, meaning to hold) and the added melodies wove about and embellished the
resulting drone.
This music thrived at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and much later became known as the Ars Antiqua, or the "old art." The two composers at
Notre Dame especially known for composing in this style are Léonin (fl. ca. 1163-1190), who
composed organa for two voices, and his successor Pérotin (fl. early13th century), whose
organa included three and even four voices. Pérotin's music is an excellent example of this very
early form of polyphony (music for two or more simultaneously sounding voices), as can be heard in
his setting of Sederunt principes.
This music was slowly supplanted by the smoother contours of the polyphonic music of the
fourteenth century, which became known as the Ars Nova.
The Trouvères and the Troubadours
Popular music, usually in the form of secular songs, existed during the Middle Ages. This music was
not bound by the traditions of the Church, nor was it even written down for the first time until
sometime after the tenth century. Hundreds of these songs were created and performed (and later
notated) by bands of musicians flourishing across Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, the
most famous of which were the French trouvères and troubadours. The monophonic melodies of
these itinerant musicians, to which may have been added improvised accompaniments, were often
rhythmically lively. The subject of the overwhelming majority of these songs is love, in all its
permutations of joy and pain. One of the most famous of these trouvères known to us (the great
bulk of these melodies are by the ubiquitous "Anonymous") is Adam de la Halle (ca. 1237-ca.
1286). Adam is the composer of one of the oldest secular music theater pieces known in the West,
Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. He has also been identified as the writer of a good many songs and
verses, some of which take the form of the motet, a piece in which two or more different verses
(usually of greatly contrasted content and meter) are fit together simultaneously, without regard to
what we now consider conventional harmonies. Such a piece is De ma dame vient! by this famous
trouvère.
Although secular music was undoubtedly played on instruments during the Middle Ages,
instrumental dance music didn't come into its own until the later Renaissance.
Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Nova
Born: Champagne region of France, ca. 1300
Died: Rheims, 1377
Having had a clerical education and taken Holy orders, Machaut's career as a poet and composer
took flight when he joined the court of John, Duke of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia around
1323, serving as the king's secretary until that monarch's death in battle at Crécy in 1346.
Sometime before this, Machaut had settled in Rheims where he remained until his death, serving as
canon in the cathedral there. His services as a composer were sought out by important patrons,
including the future Charles V of France. His poetry was known throughout Europe and his admirers
included Geoffrey Chaucer. Machaut is probably best remembered for being the first composer to
create a polyphonic setting of the Ordinary of the Catholic Mass (the Ordinary being those parts of
the liturgy that do not change, including the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei). The new
style of the fourteenth century, dubbed the Ars Nova by composers of the period, can be heard in
the "Gloria" from Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame. This new polyphonic style caught on with
composers and paved the way for the flowering of choral music in the Renaissance.
Although today the Mass is probably his best-known work, Machaut also composed dozens of
secular love songs, also in the style of the polyphonic "new art." These songs epitomize the courtly
love found in the previous century's vocal art, and capture all the joy, hope, pain and heartbreak of
courtly romance. The secular motets of the Middle Ages eventually evolved into the great
outpouring of lovesick lyricism embodied in the music of the great Renaissance Madrigalists.
Guillaume de Machaut is the first composer in Western music history who seemed to be conscious of
his artistic achievements and of his place in history. To assure that place, Machaut saw to it that his
work was painstakingly copied and artfully illustrated, the first known example of a composer thus
preserving his own work for posterity.
Generally considered to be from ca.1420 to 1600, the Renaissance (which literally means
"rebirth") was a time of great cultural awakening and a flowering of the arts, letters, and
sciences throughout Europe. With the rise of humanism, sacred music began for the first
time to break free of the confines of the Church, and a school of composers trained in the
Netherlands mastered the art of polyphony in their settings of sacred music. One of the
early masters of the Flemish style was Josquin des Prez. These polyphonic traditions
reached their culmination in the unsurpassed works of Giovanni da Palestrina.
Of course, secular music thrived during this period, and instrumental and dance music
was performed in abundance, if not always written down. It was left for others to collect
and notate the wide variety of irrepressible instrumental music of the period. The late
Renaissance also saw in England the flourishing of the English madrigal, the best known
of which were composed by such masters as John Dowland, William Byrd, Thomas Morley
and others.
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a time of rebirth in learning, science, and the arts throughout Europe. The
rediscovery of the writings of ancient Greece and Rome led to a renewed interest in learning in
general. The invention of the printing press allowed the disbursement of this knowledge in an
unprecedented manner. The invention of the compass permitted the navigation of the world's
oceans and the subsequent discovery of lands far removed from the European continent. With
Copernicus' discovery of the actual position of the earth in the solar system and Martin Luther's
Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church lost its grip on society and a humanist spirit was born.
This spirit manifested itself in the painting and sculpture of Michelangelo, the plays of Shakespeare,
and in both the sacred and secular dance and vocal music of the greatest composers of the era.
Dance music of the Renaissance
Throughout the Renaissance instrumental dance music flowered and thrived, and was composed, or
more likely improvised, by many people. Musicians whose names have come down to us collected
much of this existing music and had it published in various volumes over the years. The Terpsichore
of Michael Praetorius (c.1571-1621) and the dance music of Tielman Susato (c.1500-1561)
represent some of the outstanding examples of dance music from the late Renaissance. A piece
such as La Spagna , (attributed to Josquin des Prez) is an excellent example of the buoyant rhythms
and sounds of the Renaissance dance. Many of these dance forms were modified and developed by
later composers and found their way into the Baroque dance suite.
the Golden Age of Polyphony
Josquin des Prez
Born: Hainault or Henegouwen (Burgundy), c. 1440
Died: Condé-sur-Escaut, August 27, 1521
Not much is known about the life Josquin des Prez, but it is generally agreed that he studied under
the earlier Renaissance master Johannes Ockeghem (c.1420-1495), who was the first great
master of the Flemish school of Renaissance composers. There are references to Josquin's having
served at several courts in Italy and France, and at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He died while
serving as canon of the collegiate church at Condé. Among his surviving works are more than a
dozen masses, a hundred motets, and a good deal of secular music.
The serene, almost otherworldly choral sound of the Flemish school's style can be heard in the
Gloria from Josquin's Missa L'homme armé. Flemish composers of the time often based the cantus
firmus on a popular melody of the day, composing new music for the other voices in counterpoint to
the tune. The simultaneous interweaving of several melodic lines (usually four: soprano, alto, tenor,
bass) in a musical composition is known as polyphony. Polyphonic music of the Renaissance could
be very complex and intricate, often obscuring the words and the meaning of the text which had
been set.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Born: Palestrina, near Rome, ca. 1525
Died: Rome, February 2, 1594
Palestrina spent much of his career in Rome, serving as organist and choir master at both the
Sistine Chapel and at St. Peter's. A productive composer, he wrote over a hundred mass settings
and over two hundred motets. At the same time, he managed a very successful furrier business,
from which he died a very wealthy man.
In keeping with the strictures of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to rid the music of the Catholic
rite of the "worldly excesses" of the Protestant Reformation, Palestrina composed in a purer, more
restrained style. Gone are the vocal lines based on popular melodies. Instead, each voice part
resembles a chant melody, each with its own profile and crystalline line. In the opening Kyrie from
Palestrina's most famous work, the Pope Marcellus Mass, one can at once hear the classic, pure
lines of the text set clearly amidst the various voices of the choir. Palestrina's polyphonic writing is
of such quality that many later composers (including Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms) spent their
early years studying counterpoint in the "Palestrina style" as set down in a famous textbook by J. J.
Fux in 1725.
The English Madrigalists
Around 1600 in England, composers and poets were collaborating on a body of music known as the
English madrigal. The composer and lutenist John Dowland (1563-1626), although concentrating
mostly on melancholy ayres for solo voice with lute accompaniment, also wrote madrigals. Some of
the best known of the English madrigalists include Thomas Morley (1558-1602), Francis
Pilkington (ca.1570-1638), William Byrd (1543-1623), Orlando Gibbons(1583-1625), and
Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623). Queen Elizabeth I herself was an accomplished lute player, and
supposedly delighted in the songs and ayres of the madrigalists. Weelkes' madrigal Come, let's
begin to revel't out is a prime example of this cheerful and sprightly part-song. The texts of many of
these madrigals, however, deal with spurned or unrequited love, and are often sad, but very
beautiful.
Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (ca.1600 to
1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High
Renaissance. This was a time when the many monarchies of Europe vied in outdoing each other in
pride, pomp and pageantry. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were
little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest
composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the
time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new
style of music.
It was during the early part of the seventeenth century that the genre of opera was first created by
a group of composers in Florence, Italy, and the earliest operatic masterpieces were composed by
Claudio Monteverdi. The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its
strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music
achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. Dances
became formalized into instrumental suites and were composed by virtually all composers of the
era. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas
and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel.
The Baroque Age
The Baroque was a time of a great intensification of past forms in all the arts: painting saw the
works of Vermeer, Rubens, Rembrandt, and El Greco -- in literature it was the time of Molière,
Cervantes, Milton, and Racine -- modern science came into its own during this period with the work
of Galileo and Newton. In music, the age began with the trail-blazing works of Claudio Monteverdi,
continued with the phenomenally popular music of Antonio Vivaldi and the keyboard works of such
composers as Fran&cced;ois Couperin and Domenico Scarlatti, and came to a close with the
masterworks of two of the veritable giants of music history, Johann Sebastian Bach and George
Frideric Handel.
The beginnings of Opera
In the last years of the sixteenth century, a group of musicians and literati in Florence, Italy
experimented with a new method of composing dramatic vocal music, modeling their ideas after the
precepts of ancient Greek theater. Their intent was that this new music should prove more direct
and communicative to an audience, as the complex polyphony of the Renaissance could very often
obscure the text being sung. They instead set a single melodic line against a basic chordal
accompaniment, and with this notion of homophony, a new era of music began. The Florentine
Camerata called this new form of musical-dramatic entertainment opera. The first operas were
private affairs, composed for the Italian courts. But when in 1737 the first public opera house
opened in Venice, Italy, opera became a commercial industry, and the genre in which many
composers throughout history first tried out new ideas and new techniques of composition.
Claudio Monteverdi
Born: Cremona, (baptized May 15, 1567)
Died: Venice, November 29, 1643
The son of a doctor, Monteverdi studied music at the town cathedral in Cremona, and attained his
first position as composer and instrumentalist at the court of the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua
in 1591. In 1599 he married a singer at the court, Claudia de Cattaneis. The couple had three
children before her untimely death in 1607. The composer remained a widower for the rest of his
life. Although unhappy and grossly underpaid in Mantua, Monteverdi remained there until the death
of Vincenzo in 1612, when he was relieved of his duties by the new duke. Soon after however, he
was invited to serve as maestro di cappella at the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, an extremely
prestigious post. Monteverdi remained in Venice until his death in 1643.
Although required by his employers to compose much sacred music throughout his career,
Monteverdi seemed most happy (and his art in greatest evidence) with secular music. Monteverdi
composed and published dozens of madrigals throughout his life, and Zefiro torna is an excellent
example of his art in that secular form. In this madrigal, Monteverdi uses the common technique of
spinning out the melodic lines, one after the other, over a repeated bass figure. One of Monteverdi's
undoubted sacred masterpieces are the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, composed in 1610.
Monteverdi's settings here vary between Renaissance polyphony and the newer homophonic sound
of the Baroque. He was a master of both forms. The power and fervor of the writing can be heard in
the "Lauda Jerusalem" from the Vespers of 1610, with the sound of instruments added to the choir.
Internationally famous through the publication of his madrigals, Monteverdi scaled new artistic
heights with the composition of his operas. His first was L'Orfeo, called by the composer a "fable in
music," and was composed for the court of Duke Vincenzo in 1607. Many operas followed, but the
music to them is unfortunately lost. Monteverdi's final opera, written in 1642 when he was in his
seventies, remains one of the landmarks of the new genre and his undisputed masterwork.
Although the manuscripts that have survived consist only of the bass line and vocal parts,
comprising mostly dramatic recitativo (melodic declamations over the bass, to which the
instrumentalists fill in appropriate harmonies), the ensemble passages are of exceptional beauty.
The frankly erotic moments between Nero (originally a part for a castrato) and Poppea (soprano)
contain music that can still move and amaze modern audiences, as can be heard in the final duet,
"Pur ti miro" from L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Opera remained popular throughout the Baroque
age, culminating in the stage works of George Frideric Handel.
With his death in 1643, Monteverdi's music fell into oblivion, as it was the nature of the times to
perform only the very newest music. (Public concerts as we know them did not generally come
about until the musical scholarship of the nineteenth century.) With the early music movements of
the twentieth century and the rediscovery of his madrigals and sacred music, Claudio Monteverdi
has at last been recognized as one of the true masters of Western music.
The Baroque Concerto
With the rise of purely instrumental music in the Baroque Age, there also arose a flowering of
instrumental forms and virtuoso performers to play them. One of the earliest masters of the soonto-be predominant form of the concerto was the Italian composer and violinist Arcangelo Corelli
(1653-1713). Corelli pioneered the form of the concerto grosso, in which the principle element of
contrast between two independent groups of instruments is brought into play. The larger group is
called the ripieno and usually consisted of a body of strings with harpsichord continuo, while a
smaller group or concertino consisted of two to four solo instruments. The various sections of the
concerto would alternate between fast and slow tempos, or movements. Later composers of the
period such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi transformed this genre into the solo
concerto, in which the solo instrument is of equal importance as the string orchestra.
Antonio Vivaldi
Born: Venice, March 4, 1678
Died: Vienna, (buried July 28, 1741)
Another Italian composer and virtuoso violinist, Antonio Vivaldi is remembered today for the
enormous number of concertos he composed throughout his lifetime. He most likely learned the
violin from his father, himself a violinist at St. Mark's in Venice. Antonio took holy orders to enter
the Catholic Priesthood, and became known as "The Red Priest" due to the color of his hair. He
became a teacher in Venice at the Ospedale della Pietà (a school for foundling girls) in 1703, and
later became the director of concerts there. His music was extremely popular, and he traveled a
great deal over Europe, spreading his fame as a violinist and composer. During the 1730s, however,
his popularity began to abate and in 1738 he was dismissed from the Ospedale. Desperate, he
eventually settled in Vienna in 1740, hoping to reclaim his fame. He didn't, and he died there the
next year, to be buried in a pauper's grave.
Vivaldi's most famous compositions are the concertos for one or more solo violins and string
orchestra, although he composed a great deal of music in other genres, including cantatas, operas,
trio sonatas and others. Indeed, Vivaldi's instrumental works lay the foundation for the development
of the concerto into the Classical Period. Among his published collections of string concertos are
included La Stravanganza, Op. 4, La Cetra, Op. 9, and the ever-popular The Four Seasons,
comprised of four concertos, each depicting aspects of the seasons of the year. For instance, the
third movement of the Concerto in F "Autumn" imitates the sounds of a hunt. Vivaldi followed the
usual pattern of the era in his concertos by framing a melodious or dramatic slow second movement
with fast and lively first and third movements. Of his more than 500 concertos, some 290 are for
violin solo and strings, or for string orchestra alone. However, Vivaldi also composed a great
number of concertos for other instruments and various instrumental combinations. One such work is
the sprightly Concerto in G major for two mandolins. The solo concerto reached its culmination
during the later Classical Period in the concertos of Mozart and Beethoven.
Baroque music for the harpsichord
With a vast amount of choral and chamber music to his credit, François Couperin (1668-1733)
was recognized in his day as the leading French composer. But it is for his harpsichord music that
Couperin is best remembered today. He composed a great many suites (or ordres in French)
consisting of dance movements and character pieces with such titles as "Butterflies," "Darkness,"
"Goat-footed Satyrs," and "The mysterious barricades". This is a charming and graceful music,
beguilingly ornamented, and it opened a new direction for composers of keyboard music.
The later French composer Jean Philip Rameau (1683-1764) also composed some fine keyboard
and chamber music in the new gallant style. At the age of fifty, Rameau successfully embarked on a
new career composing the type of lavish operas and ballets so popular at the time in France. But
Rameau is best known today as the music theoretician who first rationalized chords and chordal
relationships into the harmonic system still studied by today's music students.
Domenico Scarlatti
Born: Naples, October 26, 1685
Died: Madrid, July 23, 1757
Domenico Scarlatti was the son of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) , himself a composer of a
great many operas and cantatas. Domenico is known for being a harpsichord virtuoso and for the
555 or so sonatas he composed for that instrument. Having spent a great many years wandering
about Europe evading the dominance and influence of his father, Scarlatti eventually settled in
Lisbon, Portugal, where he found employment as teacher to the Infanta, Princess Maria Barbara.
When the Infanta wedded the heir to the Spanish throne in 1729, Scarlatti was taken to Madrid
where he spent the rest of his life. It was during this period that be began composing the little
"exercises," pieces for harpsichord that he called sonatas. Regarded as one of the founders of
modern keyboard technique, Scarlatti's sonatas employed such new devices as hand-crossing, quick
arpeggios, and rapidly repeated notes. These sonatas are by turns capricious, charming, melodic,
and witty, and such works as the Sonata in D major, K. 491 point the way to the keyboard
figurations of the Classical Period.
Ars nova: title of a treatise written ca.1322-23 by French composer
Philippe de Vitry, Bishop of Meaux (1291-1361)
C. Italy and the Renaissance
1. Renaissance takes root in Italy
2. Rise of secular princes and patronage
a. Medici‹>Florence
b. Este‹>Ferrara
c. Sforza‹>Milan
d. Gonzaga‹>Mantua
3. Examples of patronage
a. Dufay's Nuper rosarum flores was composed for the dedication of the
cupola of the dome of the Cathedral in Florence in 1436.
b. Lorenzo de'Medici in the 1480s reorganized the chapel of this church
and
recruited the Flemish singer-composers Isaac, Agricola and Ghiselin.
b. Milan (the Sforza family): Josquin des Prez, Johannes Martini among
the
chapel singers.
c. Ferrara: Martini, Obrecht, Brumel, Willaert
d. Mantua: Martini, Josquin, Compere
e. Papal chapel in Rome: Josquin, Prioris, Bruhier.
D. Music Printing
1. Patronage and musical activity created a newfound demand for music
2. Movable type perfected by Johann Gutenberg by 1450
3. Liturgical books with plainchant notation are printed by 1473
4. First collection of polyphonic music from movable type:
a. Harmonice musices odhecaton (1501)
b. Pubished. by Ottaviano de'Petrucci in Venice
c. By 1523 Petrucci publ. 59 volumes of vocal and instrumental music
d. Petrucci used triple impression: one for staff lines, one for words,
one for notes
5. Later printers
a. John Rastell: single impression, London 1520
b. Pierre Attaingnant, Paris beginning 1528
c. Music printing began in German by 1534, Netherlands, 1538
d. Important printing centers: Venice, Rome, Nuremberg, Paris, Lyon,
Louvain, Antwerp.
6. Part-books were the norm for publications: one volume for each voice
or part
7. Older two-part compositional framework: tenor-soprano (followed by adding
in
the third and fourth voices successively) was obsolete.
a. Composers such as Pietro Aron taught that all parts be written
simultaneously.
II. Composers from the North
A. Dominance of northerners begins early 15th c., 1450-1550 is the defining
period
1. Most in service of the Holy Roman Emperor (Spain, Germany, Bohemia,
Austria)
King of France, pope or Italian court.
2. Italy (Naples, Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, Milan and Venice) chief center
for diffusion of French, Flemish and Netherland composers.
B. Johannes Ockeghem (1420-1497)
1. Personal history:
a. Sang in the choir of the Cathedral of Antwerp (1443)
b. Mid-1440s he was in the service of Charles I, duke of Bourbon, in
France
c. 1452 he entered the royal chapel of the king of France
C. Jacob Obrecht (1452-1505)
1. Personal history
a. Held important positions at Cambrai, Bruges, Antwerp
b. Was at the courts of Ferrara in 1487-88
c. Joined the ducal chapel in 1504 and died of the plague a year later
E. Josquin des Prez (1440-1521)
1. Culminating figure of the Renaissance
2. Personal history:
a. Born in France
b. Singer at Milan Cathedral from 1459-1472 and later member of ducal
chapel of
Galeazzo Maria Sforza
c. After Duke's assassination in 1476, Josquin serves his brother,
Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza until his death in 1505.
d. From 1486-1494 he serves at the papal chapel in Rome
e. 1501-1503 he was in France
f. In 1503 he is appointed maestro di cappella at the court of Ferrara
g. 1504-1521 he returns to his natal region at Conde-sur-l'Escaut
F. Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517)
1. Personal history
a. Flemish by birth
b. Served Medici under Lorenzo the Magnifient at Florence from 1484-1492
c. 1497 becomes court composer of Emperor Maximilian I at Vienn and
Innsbruck
d. Spent remaining years from 1501-1517 in Florence
2. Isaac's output is more internation in character than that of any other
composer of his
generation. He incorporated influences from Italy, France, Germany,
Flanders.
I. The Franco-Flemish Generation of 1520-1550
A. Background
1. Growing diversity of musical expression began to modify the dominant
cosmopolitan style of the Franco-Flemish masters.
2. Imitation of polyphonic models (imitation Mass) gradually replaces
cantus firmus mass
3. Composers begin to write for 5 or 6 voices rather to earlier standard
4-voices
7. John Taverner (ca.1490-1545)
a. Greatest English musician of this period
b. Served four years as choirmaster at Oxford college
c. Wrote festal Masses and Magnificats in the full, florid English style
III. The Madrigal and Related Forms
A. Background
1. Most important genre of Italian secular music in the 16th c.
2. Differs from the 14th c. madrigal
a. 14th c. madrigal: strophic song with a refrain (ritornello)
3. 16th c. madrigal
a. Used no refrain or any other feature of the old formes fixes
b. Madrigal, like frottola, is a generic term that includes a variety of
poetic types:
1. Sonnet
2. Ballata
3. Canzone
4. Ottava rima
c. Text typically consisted of single stanza with a free rhyme scheme
and a moderate number of seven and eleven syllable lines
4. How the madrigal differs from the frottola:
a. Poetry is more elevated and serious
b. Texts are from major poets: Petrarch, Bembo, Sannazaro, Ariosto
c. Madrigal treats the verse more freely
5. Madrigal inseparably bound up with the currents of taste and criticism of
Italian poetry
6. Number of parts in the madrigal
a. 1520-1550: 4-voices
b. Mid-16th century: 5-voices
c. 6-8 voices often used too
B. Madrigal Texts
1. Sentimental or erotic subject matter with scene and allusions from
pastoral poetry
2. Text usually ends with an epigrammatic climax in the last line or two
3. Sung at courtly social gatherings
4. Often amateur performers, around 1570 professional groups appear
5. Madrigals also sung in plays and theatrical productions
C. Early madrigal centers and important composers
1. Florence
a. Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548)
b. Francesco de Layolle (1492-1540)
c. Philippe Verdelot (ca.1480-1545)
2. Rome
a. Constanzo Festa (1490-1545)
3. Venice
a. Adrian Willaert
b. Jacob Arcadelt
D. The Petrarchan Movement
1. Pietro Bembo (1470-1547)
a. Poet, statesman and cardinal greatly responsible for the veneration
of the 14th century poet Petrarch in the 16th c.
b. Edited Petrarch's Canzoniere in 1501
c. Identified two opposing qualities that Petrarch sought in his verse:
1. Piacevolezza (pleasingness)
2. Gravita (severity)
d. Rhythm, distance of rhyme, number of syllables per line, accent
patterns
and sonorous qualities all contributed to making the verse pleasing
or severe
e. Prose della volga lingua (1525) book by Bembo, also very influential
2. Composers influenced by Petrarchan Movement
a. Pisano publ. 17 settings of Petrarch's canzoni in 1520
b. Willaert's Musica nova publ 1559, written in the 1540s contains 25
madrigals all but one are settings of sonnets by Petrarch.
c. Cipriano de Rore set 11 madriagals on Petrarch's Vergini
E. Cipriano de Rore (1516-1565)
1. Leading madrigalist of his generation, set trends for the madrigal of the
2nd half of the 16th century
2. Personal history
a. Flemish by birth
b. Worked in Italy, chiefly at Ferrara and Parma
c. Was music director at St.Mark's in Venice for a short time as
successor
to Willaert
3. Musical style
a. Chromatic exploration spurred by experiments to revive Greek music
1. Half-step motion
2. Excursions out of the mode
b. Important innovator Nicola Vicentino
1. Published treatise in 1555 calling for a revival, L'antica musica
ridotta all moderna prattica (Ancient Music Adapted to the
Modern Practice)
G. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
1. Through madrigal Monteverdi makes the transition from writing for the
polyphonic vocal ensemble to the instrumentally accompanied solo and
duet.
2. Personal history
a. Born at Cremona
b. 1590 enters service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua
c. Becomes master of ducal chapel 1602 (Mantua)
d. From 1613-1643 he was choirmaster at St.Mark's in Venice
3. Monteverdi's first five books of madrigals publ.1587, 1590, 1592, 1603,
1606.
a. These works belong to the history of the polyphonic madrigal
b. Smooth combination of homophonic and contrapuntal part writing
c. Faithful reflection of the text
d. Freedom of expressive harmonies and dissonances
e. Traits that differ from his contemporaries:
1. Musical motives are not melodic, but declamatory, in the manner
of the recitative
2. Texture often departs from the medium of equal voices and become
a duet over a harmonically supporting bass
3. Ornamental dissonances and embellishments previously admitted in
improvisation are incorporated in the written score.
4. Monteverdi's debate with Artusi
a. Prima prattica: letting the music guide the text
b. Seconda prattica: letting the text guide the music
J. The English Madrigal
1. Golden age of secular song in England comes later than in the Continental
countries
2. Musica transalpina: 1588 publication by Nicholas Yonge in Londen
a. Collection of Italian madrigals in English translations
b. More anthologies appear in the next decade which gives rise to the
English
madrigal composition that flourished in the 1590s
3. Leading figures
a. Thomas Morley (1557-1602)
1. Morley was the most prolific
2. Wrote lighter types of madrigals, in the related forms of ballett
and canzonet (particularly the balletti of Gastoldi)
3. Homophonic textures, with tune in topmost voice
4. Dance-like meter
5. Distinct sections set off by full cadences and with repetitions
resulting in formal patterns such as AABB or the like and with
two or three strophes sung to the same music
6. There is also a refrain, often sung to the syllables 'fa-la-la'
7. Also wrote the treatise: A Plain and Easy Guide to Practical Music
b. Thomas Weelkes
c. John Wilbye (1574-1638)
4. English Madrigal
a. Differs from Italian prototype by its:
1. Greater attention to musical structure,
2. Preoccupation with purely musical devices,
3. Reluctance to follow the Italians in splitting compositions
mercurially at the whim of the text
4. 'English madrigalist is first of all a musician, his Italian
colleague is more of a dramatist' (Joseph Kerman,
The Elizabethan Madrigal)
b. Madrigals, balletts and canzonets were all written primarily for
unaccompanied solo voices
5. The Triumphes of Oriana (1601)
a. A collection of 25 madrigals by different composers
b. Edited and published by Thomas Morley
1. His model was an Italian anthology called Il trionfo di Dori
published 1592
c. Each madrigal acclaims Queen Elizabeth I, and ends with the words
'Long live fair Oriana'
6. English Lute Songs (air)
a. Genre flourishes after the turn of the century, coinciding with the
decline of the madrigal
b. Leading composers
1. John Downland (1562-1626)
2. Thomas Campion (1567-1620)
c. Musical style
1. Typically lacks the pictoral touches of the madrigal
2. Mood is uniformly lyrical
3. Sensitivity to text declamation
4. Lute accompaniments are subordinated to the voice, but do display
some amount of rhythmic and melodic independence
d. Notation
1. Voice and lute parts usually printed on the same page in vertical
alignment
2. Singer presumably accompanied himself
7. Consort songs
a. Native English tradition in the late 16th c.
b. Solo songs or duets with accompaniment of a consort of viols
c. At a later stage a chorus was introduced
d. Psalmes, Sonnets and Songs (1588)
1. Collections published by William Byrd
IV. Instrumental Music of the Sixteenth Century
A. Rise of Instrumental Music
1. 1450-1550 primarily and era of vocal polyphony although instrumental
genres
are developed
2. Medieval sources of instrumental music
a. Robertsbridge codex
b. Faenza codex
c. Include keyboard arrangements, elaborations of cantilenas and
motets in addition to independent inst. music (dances, fanfares,
etc.)
3. Instrumental music as oral tradition prior to increase in written music
from the 15th c.
a. Growing status of instrumental musicians
b. Publication of books, treatises describing instruments
1. Many of these are practical books written in the vernacular
B. Instruments
1. Musica getutscht und ausgezogen (1511, 'A Summary of Music in German)
a. Written by Sebastian Virdung
2. Syntagma musicum (1618, 'Treatise of Music')
a. Written by Michael Praetorius
b. Descriptions and woodcuts of various 16th c. instruments
3. Two items of importance:
a. Extraordinary number and variety of wind instruments
b. Instruments built in sets or families, one uniform timbre available
throughout entire range from bass to soprano (recorders, viols,
for example)
4. Principal instruments
a. Winds
1. Recorders
2. Shawms (double-reed)
3. Krummhorns (double-reed)
4. Kortholt and Rauschpfeife (capped-reed)
5. Transverse flute
6. Cornetts (made of wood or ivory)
7. Trumpets
8. Sakbuts (ancestor to the modern trombone)
b. Stings
1. Viols
a. Fretted neck
b. Six strings (tuned a 4th apart, w/maj. 3rd in the middle
A-d-g-b-e-a)
c. Organs
1. Church organ of 1500 essentially the same as today
2. Portative organ, disappears in 15th c.
d. Keyboards
1. Clavichord
a. Generally used as a solo instrument
2. Harpsichord
a. Other names: virginal, spinet, clavecin, clavicembalo
b. Used for both solo and ensemble playing
e. Lute
1. The most popular household solo instrument of the Renaissance
2. Fretted neck
3. Used special notation: tablature
C. Relation of Instrumental to Vocal Music
1. At the beginning of the 16th c. inst. music was closely associated in
style
and performance with vocal music.
a. Instrumental often doubled or replaced voices in sacred and secular
polyphonic pieces
b. In the Office, the Magnificat was frequently performed in alternation
btw.
the choir and the organ, even number verses being sung, odd being
played
c. Short organ pieces used as substitutes for portions of the service
normally sung were called verses or versets
2. Organ hymns
a. Example of organ hymn based on a vocal cantus firmus: Pange lingua by
Jean Titelouze (1563-1633)
b. In nomine, found only in English sources
1. John Tevarner arranged for instruments the section composed on the
words 'in nomine Domine' from the Benedictus of his Mass Gloria
tibi Trinitas
2. His model was followed by other composers
c. English composers also used the six notes of the hexachord as organ
cantus firmus for contrapuntal elaboration
1. John Bull's (1562-1628) 'hexachord fancy'
D. Vocal Models
1. Canzona
a. Instrumental canzona in Italy was called a canzon da sonar (song to
be played)
b. Also called canzona alla francese (chanson in the French style)
c. Canzonas written both for ensembles and solo instruments
d. Development of genre took place from 1550-1600
2. Musical style of the canzona
a. Originally modelled after the French chanson
1. Light, fast-moving, strongly rhythmic
2. Fairly contrapuntal texture
3. Standard opening rhythmic figure consisting of a single note
followed by two of half the value of the first (half-note
followed by two quarters)
b. Canzona becomes the leading form of contrapuntal music
c. Earliest Italian examples (apart from mere transcriptions of
vocal pieces) dates from 1580 for organ
1. Organ canzonas were the forerunners of the fugue
2. Fugue and canzona were synonymous in Germany as early as 1607
d. Ensemble canzonas eventually develop into the sonata da chiesa of
the 17th c.
3. Formal aspects of the canzona
a. Multisectional
b. Contrasting sections and themes
E. Dance Music
1. Social dancing was widespread and highly regarded in the Renaissance
2. Printed collections, partbooks and tablatures published by Petrucci,
Attaingnant and others
3. Musical style
a. Regular rhythmic patterns
b.
c.
d.
e.
Distinct sections
Little contrapuntal interplay of lines
Principal melody often highly ornamented
Dance pieces typically grouped in pairs or threes, precursors to the
dance suite
f. Dance pieces owed little to vocal models
4. A typical combination was a slow dance in duple meter, followed by fast
triple meter piece based on the same tune
a. Frequent pairing in 16th c. French publications: pavane and galliard
b. Passamezzo and saltarello
5. Ballet comique de la reine (The Queen's Dramatic Ballet)
a. Earliest extant French ballet
b. Given at Paris in 1581
6. Other dances
a. Allemande: dance in moderate duple meter
b. Courante
c. Morley's Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597)
describes the popular dances of the 16th c.
F. Improvisatory Pieces
1. Characteristic intrumental traits crept into music through improvisation
2. 16th c. improvisation
a. Ornamentation: elaboration of a given melodic line
b. Discant: polyphonic elaboration, improvising a counter-melody
3. Basse danse
a. 15th-16th c. improvised dance over a borrowed tenor
b. Later basses danses publ. by Attaingnant in the 1530s have melody in
top line
4. Preludes, preambulum, fantasia or ricercare: terms for improvisatory
pieces
5. Toccata
a. Chief form for keyboard improvisation of the late 16th c.
b. Name comes from the Italian verb 'to touch'
c. Claudio Merulo (1533-1604) early composer of toccatas
G. Ricercar
1. The instrumental counterpart to the motet (just as the canzona is the
counterpart to the chanson)
2. Use of imitative counterpoint, textless imitative motet
3. Sometimes for ensemble playing, smoetimes for solo inst.
H. Sonata
1. 15th c. term for instrumental pieces (solo and ensemble)
2. 16th Italian usage refers to sacred counterpart of the canzona
3. St.Mark's in Venice as an important center for inst. music in the 16th c.
a. Merulo, A.Garbrieli both organists at St.Mark's
b. Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1612)
1. Nephew of A.Gabrieli
2. Wrote 7 sonatas and 36 canzone
3. The famous Sonata pian'e forte from Sacrae symphoniae (1597)
a. Double-chorus motet for instruments
b. One of the earliest uses of dynamic indications
I. Variations
1. Evolved from improvisation on a tune as an accompaniment to dancing
2. Intabulatura di lauto (Venice, 1508)
a. Lute-tablatures published by Joan Ambrosio Dalza
b. Includes written out variations on Venetian and Ferrarese pavane tunes
3. Improvisation and composition of variations on short ostinato patters
a. Pasamezzo antico
b. Moderno
c. Romanesca, Ruggiero and Guardame las vacas
d. These were prototypes for the later chaconne and passacaglia
4. Virginalists
a. English keyboard composers of the late 16th century
1. William Byrd
2. John Bull
3. Orlando Gibbons
4. Thomas Tomkins
b. Mulliner Book (ca. 1540-1585)
1. Important manuscript collection of keyboard music
2. Published in England
c. Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (ca.1609-1619)
1. A manuscript copied by Francis Tregian
2. Contains nearly 300 compositions from the late 16th early 17th c.
a. Transcriptions of madrigals
b. Contrapuntal fantasias
c. Dances and preludes
d. Sets of variations
3. Folk melodies often used for variations
I. The Music of the Reformation in Germany
A. The Protestant Reformation
1. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in
Wittenberg in 1517.
2. Lutheran Church and Music
a. Luther admired Franco-Flemish polyphony, particularly works by Josquin
b. He wished to retain music in Lutheran services
3. Deutsche Mass
a. Published as early as 1526: a German Mass (in the vernacular) for use
in
smaller congregations
1. The Gloria is omitted
2. German hymns were substituted for most of the Ordinary
B. The Lutheran Chorale
1. Stophic congregational hymn
2. Also known as a Kirchelied
3. Primary elements of the chorale
a. Text
b. Tune
4. As much Catholic church music of the 16th c. was an outgrowth of
plainsong,
so too was Lutheran church music of the 17th and 18th c. an outgrowth of
the chorale
5. First collections of chorales published in 1524
a. Originally publ. with a single melody
b. Intended for unison singing without accompaniment or harmonization
c. Original notation was similar to chant notation
6. Ein' feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress)
a. Text by Luther, music possibly by Luther
b. First printed in 1529
C. Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594)
1. Personal history
a. Born near Rome, served as choirboy in Rome
b. 1544: appointed organist and choirmaster in Palestrina
c. 1551: choirmaster of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter's
d. 1555: singer in the Sistine Chapel
e. 1565-1571: taught at a Jesuit Seminary
f. 1571: recalled to St. Peter's
II. Early Opera
A. Forerunners
1. Basic definition of opera
a. Drama which combines soliloquy, dialogues, scenery, action and
continuous music
b. Earliest operas date from the end of the 16th c.
2. Intermedi or intermezzi
a. Musical interludes that would occur between acts of a comic or
tragic play
b. Intermedi were often elaborate productions including choruses,
soloists and large instrumental ensembles
3. Madrigal composers
a. Often wrote music for intermedi
b. Representative techniques of 16th c. madrigals suggesting action
and emotion were antecedents of opera
4. Madrigal Cycles
a. Adaptations of madrigals to dramatic purposes in a series of scenes
b. Composers
1. Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605)
a. L'Amfiparnaso (The Slopes of Parnassus): madrigal comedy
2. Adriano Banchieri (1568-1634)
5. The Pastoral
a. Madrigals, intermedi and madrigal comedies often had pastoral
scenes and subjects
1. This was a favorite literary genre in the Renaissance
2. Becomes predominant form in Italian poetry at the end of the
16th c.
b. Pastoral
1. Poems about shepherds and other rural subjects
2. Loosely dramatic tales of idyllic and amatory character
6. Text Setting
a. Two distinct types of text in the madrigal and intermedi
a. Narrative or dialogue by which a situation developed
b. The outpouring of feelings that arose from the situation
7. Greek Tragedy as a Model
a. Greek tragedy served as a distant model for the kind of dramatic
music literary men of the Renaissance thought would be appropriate
to the theater
b. One group of composers believed only the choruses were to be sung
1. Andrea Gabrieli writes choruses for an Italian production of
Sophocles' Oedipus rex in a homophonic declamatory style that
emphasized the rhythm of the spoken word (1585)
c. Another group Florentine Camerata believed the entire work was sung
B. Florentine Camerata
1. Group of Florentine intellectuals, musicians that created the modern
opera
2. Important members
a. Girolamo Mei
1. Scholar who edited a number of Greek tragedies
2. Studied almost every ancient work on music and reported
his research in the treatise: De modis musicis antquorum
3. Giovanni Bardi
4. Vincenzo Galilei
b. Theories
1. Mei concluded that the Greeks were able to achieve powerful effects
with their music because it consisted of a single melody
2. Melody could affect the listener's feelings since it exploited the
natural expressiveness of the rises and falls of pitch and register
of the voice
c. Initial experiments
1. Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621) & Jacopo Peri (1561-1633)
a. Rinuccini's Dafne was produced in Florence as the 1st
dramatic pastoral fully set to music in 1597
2. Rinuccini's L'Euridice
a. Set by Peri and Giulio Caccini (1600)
3. Emilio de'Cavalieri (1550-1602)
a. Produced the sacred musical play Rappresentatione di
anima et di corpo in Rome in 1600
d. Musical styles
1. Caccini and Cavalieri wrote in a style based on the old improvised
air for singing poetry and on the madrigal
2. Peri utlized a new style for dialogue called the stile recitativo or
recitative style
e. Le nuove musiche (The New Music)
1. Collection of Caccini's airs and madrigals publ. in 1602
2. Musical style uses a strongly declamatory style
f. Recitative Style
1. Peri simulated speech by using static basso continuo against
steady vocal motion through consonances and dissonances
2. Voice was liberated from harmony to emulate declamation
g. Monody
1. Used in recitative, aria and madrigal
2. Becomes the central technique of opera music
C. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
1. L'Orfeo
a. Produced in Mantua in 1607
b. Patterned after the Florence Euridice operas
c. Alessandro Striggio adapts Rinuccini's pastoral into a 5 act drama
d. Important differences with Peri/Caccini versions
1. Monteverdi uses a large orchestra
a. 40 instruments (not all used simultaneously)
b. Strings, flutes, trumpets, sakbuts, continuo inst.
c. 26 brief orchestral numbers including an introductory
toccata and several ritornellos
2. Arianna (1608)
D. Other Opera Productions
1. Over the next 30 years there were few opera productions
a. Marco da Gagliano (1594-1651)
1. Dafne (1608)
2. Il Medoro (1619)
b.Francesca Caccini (1587-1640): daughter of Giulio Caccini
1. La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (1625)
c. Gagliano and Peri
1. La Flora (1628)
2. Opera takes root in Rome in the 1620s
a. Election of Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623 was fortuitous
for
opera
b. Giulio Rospigliosi was the most prolific librettist of sacred, serious
and
comic operas
1. Sant' Alessio (1632): his most famous libretto set to
a. Music by Stefano Landi (1590-1655)
b. Music includes prelude consisting of a slow, chordal introduction
followed by a livlier canzona movement.
1. 2 mov't form later became the accepted pattern
for the 17th c. opera overture
2. Possible antecedent for the French Overture
c. Luigi Rossi (1597-1653)
1. Orfeo (Paris, 1647)
a. Libretto by Francesco Buti
b. Based on the earlier operas of Peri, Caccini and Monteverdi
c. Opera is an example of how librettos had changed during first
half of 17th c.
1. Original myth is now buried under a mass of irrelevant
incidents, characters, spectacular scenic effects and
incongruous scenic episodes.
2. Intrusion of the comic, grotesque and sensational into
a supposedly serious drama was a common practice
of 17th c. Italian librettists.
3. Indicates that drama was no longer primary aim as it had
been with the early Florentine composers
4. Opera designed to provide good opportunities to the
composer and the singers.
E. Venetian Opera
1. Andromeda (1637)
a. 1st Venetian opera production
1. Written and produced by Benedetto Ferrari (1603-1681) and
composer Francesco Manelli
2. Perf. at the Teatro S. Cassiano
a. Paying public was admitted (a first in the history of opera)
b. Previous operas relied on wealthy or aristocratic patrons
2. Opera becomes the center of Venetian musical life
3. Monteverdi
a. Last 2 operas are staged in Venice
1. Il ritono d'Ulisse ((1641)
2. L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642)
a. Monteverdi's masterpiece
b. Smaller orchestra and scenic apparatus than Orfeo
c. Most advanced depiction of emotion and characterization to date
4. Other Venetian composers
a. Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676)
1. Pupil of Monteverdi
2. Wrote 41 operas
a. Giasone (1649): most famous work
1. Scenes with alternating recit. and arias
b. Other works: Egisto (1643), Ormindo (1644), Calisto (1651)
1. Arias are true set pieces
2. Recit. lacks the variety of Monteverdi
b. Antonio Cesti (1623-1669)
1. Cesti excels in lyrical arias and duets
2. Il pomo d'oro
a. Perf. Vienna in 1667 for the wedding of Emperor Leopold I
b. Festival opera: staged without regard to expense and includes
many non-standard features
1. Unusually large orchestra and many choruses
2. Lavish scenic effects/machinary used to create:
a. Naval battles
b. Storms, shipwrecks
3. Orontea (1649)
a. One of the most popular operas of the 17th c.
1. Rec'd perf. in Venice, Rome, Florence, Milan,
Naples, Inssbruck and elsewhere.
madrigals
• MIDI • 2. Who ever thinks or hopes of love for love
• MIDI • 3. My thoughts are wing'd
• MIDI • 4. If my complaints could passions move
• MIDI • 5. Can she excuse my wrongs
• MIDI • 6. Now o now I needs must part
• MIDI • 7. Dear, if you change
• MIDI • 8. Burst forth my tears
• MIDI • 9. Go crystal tears
• MIDI • 10. Thinkst thou then by thy feigning
• MIDI • 11. Come away, come sweet love
• MIDI • 12. Rest a while you cruel cares
• MIDI • 13. Sleep wayward thoughts
• MIDI • 14. All ye whom love or fortune hath betray'd
• MIDI • 15. Wilt thou unkind thus reave me
• MIDI • 16. Would my conceit that first enforc'd my woe
• MIDI • 17. Come again: Sweet love doth now invite
• MIDI • 18. His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd
• MIDI • 19. Awake sweet love thou art return'd
• MIDI • 20. Come heavy sleep
• MIDI • 21. Away with these self-loving lads
Ciaran's Music Page
What you'll find here is the music I love: Mostly madrigals (primarily
English, but also Italian), earlier Italian frottola, French chansons and Spanish
villancica and Renaissance sacred music. What holds it all together? They're all
from the Renaissance, and all use the same theoretical considerations (except
for the two extra pieces).
Having sung in choirs and consorts since 1958, I've sung everything from
Victorian English Church music to Old Church Slavonic Chant, Randall
Thompson to all of the four "B's" (I never forget the originator of the concerto
form: William Byrd). But, I keep coming back to Renaissance music, because it
speaks to my soul.
You'll find these files arranged by the composer's surname (except
Josquin, whose epithetic last name means "the priest").
I have put the scores here in both MIDI and NoteWorthy Composer (
.nwc ) formats. Noteworthy allows you to see the words as well as play the
music, and even print it out, but you'll need the Noteworthy Composer2 Viewer
software to play them. It's free, (click here to get it) but you'll need to use a PC.
(Sorry, MAC users, but I still can't find an affordable program for the
Macintosh platform.) The Viewer takes takes ~360KB of hard-drive space but
it's been worth it to my friends and students.
If you prefer a .pdf version, there are also .pdf files here for each of the
pieces, but you will need Adobe Reader 7.0 (which is available from this link)
A Brief History of the Madrigal
The madrigal began in Modena, Italy as an outgrowth of a 14th/15th
century Italian form called the frottola. When the cathedrals and nobility in
Tuscany and Lomdardy began hiring Flemish choir-masters like Adrian
Willaert, Jacob Arcadelt and Philip Verdelot, the music began to change.
What had started as a native Italian style (mostly humophonic songs
about love and loss), began to use more and more polyphony and
"madrigalism" (or "word-painting") to be more expressive of the text.
Even the Roman Palestrina was know to have written a number of
madrigals, some of which are presented here. But, (like the much later Carl
Orff, who dissociated himself from almost all of his works before Carmina
Burana) he asked his publisher to withdraw these earlier compositions when he
applied for a position in the choir of the Sistine Chapel, calling them frivolous.
One of the techniques used by the Flemish (and their Italian students)
was imitation. This "imitation" was rarely full canon (like a round), but instead
could take a different pitch from the first part as starting point for the new part.
Frequently, each part starts at a different time interval from the beginning of the
piece. Each individual part-beginning was called a "point", and voice-parts
coming in later are said to be "taking up the point", providing counterpoints
(even though they might actually be exactly the same music as the point).
The reputation of the Flenish and the Italians spread thoughout Europe.
Their music quickly followed.
The French used the native term chanson (meaning song,which is used
for all French art-songs, regardles of the actual underlying form, even to this
day). In Spain, the equivalent was the villancico.
Upon reaching Germany, and then England (in the 1580's), the Italian
name was retained, but the music became even more expressive of the text,
resulting in fully-polyphonic "through-composed" (i.e., having no verse
structure) settings.
There were other forms, which were rather closely related to to the
madrigal. These are:
The Canzonet: short, multi-verse compositions, which, like later Italian
madrigals,
may involve extensive use of polyphony, and frequently involve either
an
AABB or ABA structure, and
The Ballet (usually pronounced bal'-ut), which is similar to the lighter
madrigals of
Luca Marenzio (who inspired the Englishman Thomas Morley) which
use
nonsense syllables (most often fa-la-la) in order to fill out the music.
The English madrigal didn't exist until the 1586 (when English
composers were finally able to turn some attention away from providing music
in English for the Church). and following the continental style, died out by
1625, is considered by many to be the height of choral compositional skill.
Meant to be sung around a table after dinner, by the hosts and guests in the
emerging English middle-class, and not the concert performance music it has
since become.
At least two of the master composers of the genre (Thomas Morley and
John Dowland) wrote singing manuals. Morley's 1597 book, A Plaine and
Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, is, by today's standards, neither. It
talks about vocal technique, and makes the point that such singing was quite
normal in middle-class homes, and that the lack of such an ability was
considered uncommon.
But Morley was no dis-interested author, he had an axe to grind: he was
the sole publisher of music in England, having obtained a patent from Elizabeth
I in 1596 for the importation, printing and publishing of music and music
paper. Thus, if you wanted to print music or music paper, or bring it into
England from anywhere else, you had to pay a license fee to Morley.
One might think this quite an easy way to make money, but enforcement
was left to the patent-holder making civil suit in the courts, and the previous
patent-holders (the composers and members of the Chapel Royal, Thomas
Tallis and William Byrd) had been forced to seek relief from their patent from
the Queen, who considered not issuing one again.
Extra Music
At the beginning of the list are two older English pieces: Sumer is
Icumen In and Deo Gracias Anglia (aka The Agincourt Carol), which have not
yet been reliably credited to any particular composer, and aren't of the same
type of music, but they are intriguing.
Sumer is icumen in was found in a manuscript from England's Reading
Abbey (the words were actually written in the margins of the manuscript next
to a liturgical hymn with the same music).
Deo Gracias Anglia appeared in the Chapel Royal collection by the end
of Henry V's Normandy campaign of 1415-16. While the Court Rolls indicate
that one "John Cook, clerke of the king's chapel, is granted 6s., fore presentyng
a songe onn the recente victorie" in January, 1416 (less than three months after
the decisive battle), this isn't definitive proof of authorship of this piece.
There are also two anonymous Spanish villancica: Riu, riu, chiu and Je
me levé about which the attribution is uncertain, though many believe the first
is likely the work of Mateo Flecha (El Juven).
Also new here is the Mass in Three Parts written by William Byrd.
Recognized throughout Europe in his own time as a master, Byrd trained with
Thomas Tallis, and was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. A favorite of Queen
Elizabeth I, he was given a house and preferment by the Queen, even though he
remained a not-so-secret Catholic when it was illegal to be one. He and Tallis
had held the Patent for the printing and importation of music and musicmanuscript paper in England, but they weren't businessmen, and lost money in
the venture.
Medieval (c.1150 - c.1400)
This is the first period where we can begin to be fairly certain as to
how a great deal of the music which has survived actually sounded.
The earliest written secular music dates from the 12th century
troubadours (in the form of virelais, estampies, ballades etc.), but
most notated manuscripts emanate from places of learning usually
connected with the church, and therefore inevitably have a religious
basis.
Gregorian chant and plainsong which are monodic (i.e. written as one
musical line) gradually developed during the 11th to 13th centuries
into organum (i.e. two or three lines moving simultaneously but
independently, therefore almost inadvertently representing the
beginnings of harmony). Organum was, however, initially rather stifled
by rigid rules governing melody and rhythm, which led ultimately to
the so-called Ars Nova period of the 14th century, principally
represented by the composers de Vitry, Machaut, and Landini.
Renaissance (c.1400 - c.1600)
The fifteenth century witnessed vastly increased freedoms, most
particularly in terms of what is actually perceived as 'harmony' and
'polyphony' (the simultaneous movement of two or three interrelated
parts). Composers (although they were barely perceived as such) were
still almost entirely devoted to choral writing, and the few instrumental
compositions which have survived often create the impression (in
many cases entirely accurately) of being vocal works in disguise, but
minus the words.
There is obvious new delight in textural variety and contrast, so that,
for example, a particular section of text might be enhanced by a vocal
part dropping out momentarily, only to return again at a special
moment of emphasis. The four most influential composers of the
fifteenth century were Dunstable, Ockeghem, Despres and Dufay.
The second half of the 16th century witnessed the beginnings of the
tradition which many music lovers readily associate with the normal
feel of 'classical' music. Gradually, composers moved away from the
modal system of harmony which had predominated for over 300 years
(and still sounds somewhat archaic to some modern ears), towards the
organisation of their work into major and minor scales, thereby
imparting the strong sensation of each piece having a definite tonal
centre or 'key'.
This was also something of a golden period for choral composition as a
seemingly endless flow of a capella (unaccompanied) masses, motets,
anthems, psalms and madrigals flowed from the pens of the masters
of the age. In addition, instrumental music came into its own for the
first time, especially keyboard music in the form of fantasias,
variations, and dance movements (galliards, pavanes etc.). Composers
of particular note include Dowland, Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Frescobaldi,
Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus, Lobo, Cardoso and Gesualdo.