The Renaissance (1400-1600)
Ghent Altar-Piece (c. 1432) by Jan van Eyck (1395-1441)
Detail of panels from the Ghent Altar-Piece
Painting
Sculpture
 Realism, perspective, symbolism
 The macabre: Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)
Images of Domestic Music-Making in the Renaissance
a) Couple playing harp and lute
b) Man plays a portative organ while his wife dutifully operates the bellows
c) Three young women singing & playing from partbooks
Images of peasants and their music in Renaissance Holland, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
(1525-1569)
 The instrument featured in each is the bagpipe
Sacred Music
Motets: Polyphonic settings of biblical or other religious texts. Sacred but non-liturgical.
Mass Composition
• Liturgy was still mostly monophonic plainsong
• The Ordinary becomes increasing polyphonic
• •Mass settings becomes the principal experimental grounds for
composers•Popular to set the five parts of the Ordinary — Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, Agnus Dei — and to discover ways of unifying them musicallyMasses
built on plainchant, either literally or as paraphrase of the chant
Imitative Polyphony
Josquin Desprez (ca. 1440-1521)
• High Renaissance Composer
• Franco-Flemish Composer — area of what is now northern France and Belgium
• Highly respected in his day
Example: Josquin’s Missa pange lingua (c. 1510)
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Based on the Latin hymn “Pange lingua”
Set in four parts (SATB) — a development over the previous, pervasive imitation
(so-called points of imitation)
Kyrie: Tenor  Bass  Soprano  Alto
The hymn returns in each of the various movements
“Pange lingua” hymn melody
Renaissance Manuscript
Notice the inclusion of a time signature, different clefs for each part, 5-line staves, and
relatively modern note shapes and durations.
Printing Press
Guttenberg Bible
Printed Music
Music printing is was a three-part process:
1. Staves
2. Notes
3. Text
The Reformation and Counter Reformation
1. Martin Luther (1483-1546)
2. John Calvin (1509-64)
3. Henry VIII (1491-1547)
Late Renaissance
1. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
2. Orlando di Lasso (c. 1532-1594)
3. Tomás Luis de Victoria (c. 1548-1611)
4. William Byrd (1543-1623)
Madrigal: A secular polyphonic work for 4-6 voices set to a particular genre of poem
(the madrigal) consisting of varying numbers of lines of seven to eleven syllables.
First established in Italy but became popular throughout Europe.
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Through Composition
Word Painting
English Madrigalists:
Thomas Morley (c. 1557/58 -1602)
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Musica Transalpina (1588)
The Triumphs of Oriana (1601)
Morley’s Dedication of the Triumphs of Oriana (1601)
Example: Thomas Weelkes (1575/76-1623), “As Vesta was from Latmos hill
descending” (1601)
As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending
She spied a maiden Queen the same ascending
Attended on by all the shepherd’s swain
To whom Diana’s darlings came running down amain
First two by two, then three by three together
Leaving their Goddess all alone, hasted thither
And mingling with the shepherds of her train,
With mirthful tunes her presence did entertain.
Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana:
Long live fair Oriana!