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)
 William Byrd (1543-1594)
 Johannes Ockeghem (1425-1497)
 Thomas Morley (1557-1602)
 Josquin des Prez (1440-1521)
 Jacopo Peri (1561-1633)
 Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)
 Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594)
 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
Mass
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 – polyphonic choral work with
5 sections:
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



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.
Josquin des Prez (1440-1521)
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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)…
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
• 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
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
The Ballett
 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 Ayre
 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 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: plainsong
Polyphonic textures: organum – elaboration of existing
plainchants composed by adding successive layers of melody
and words
Ars Antiqua rhythms based on regular poetry patterns
Ars Nova rhythms more flexible and adventurous
A tendency to contrast sounds rather than blend them together
Main Characteristics of Renaissance Music
Accidentals are slowly creeping in
Richer, fuller texture in four or more voice-parts
Blending rather than contrasting musical textures
Harmony: a great concern with the flow and progression of
chords
Church music: some pieces intended for a cappella performace,
mainly contrapuntal with much imitation to create flowing
seamless texture
Church music: other pieces accompanied by instruments
Secular music: rich variety of vocal pieces
The birth of forming instrument families