Transcript Middle Ages and Renaissance

Middle Ages and Renaissance
Worldview, Music
Medieval World: 476-1475
• Church is the center of life and thought
• Music, sacred and secular, is mostly
monophonic (monophony).
• Terms: reciting tone, melisma, syllabic,
plainchant, Divine Office
• Listening example: Anonymous, In Paradisum,
9th century
• Listening example: Hildegard of Bingen,
Columba aspexit, 12th century
Painting: Madonna and Child Enthroned, c. 1270, Margaritone di Arezzo c. 1216-1290).
For a painting in the 13th century, this painting, with its stylized, two-dimensional
character, is remarkably like Byzantine art from earlier times.
Medieval Court Music
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Secular composers for the voice:
Troubadours, S. France
Trouveres, North France
Minnesingers Germany
Listening Example: Bernard de Ventadorn, La
dousa votz, 12th century, troubadour
Divine Office
• Part of the liturgy
• A series of 8 daily church services, approx. 3
hours apart, in which the Psalms were sung.
• Unaccompanied
• Plainchant (at least in the Middle Ages)
The Mass
• Kyrie—a sung simple prayer 3-part, or ternary,
form
• Gloria—a long hymn
• Credo—a recitation of beliefs
• Sanctus—a shorter hymn
• Agnus Dei—a sung simple prayer
Organum
• The addition of another voice to monophonic
plainchant, usually at perfect interval such as
the fourth or fifth, in parallel motion.
• Organum is an early form of polyphony
• Example: Perotin, Alleluia, Diffusa est gratia
c. 1200 (p. 58 textbook; CD 1:4 of 6-CD set).
The early motet
• After 1200, music starts to break away from a
church-only focus.
• Motet: from the French word “mot” for the many
words in the upper voices. Polyphonic.
• A fragment of plainchant is repeated many times
in the lowest voice. Other voice parts layer in
over top, each with its own words, many secular.
• Isorhythm—a short rhythmic pattern which is
repeated many times, but on different pitches.
Ars Nova
• The complex polyphony of the late Medieval
period is described as the “new art” (ars nova)
of the fourteenth century.
• The motet continues to develop as an
important genre.
• Organum is now considered to be “ancient
art” (ars antiqua).
In music, the ars nova broke from the use of plainchant and organum (the ars antigua), and
moved to more complex polyphonic forms. Similarly, Giotto Giotto di Bondone (1266 or 1267- to
1337) broke from the Byzantine tradition of stylized, two-dimension icons, moving toward a more
representation style of painting.
Late Medieval Polyphony
• Listening Ex. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 13001377), Chanson, Dame de qui toute me joie
vient, 14th century. Machaut was a leading
composer of the ars nova period in nonimitative polyphony
• Form: a a b (binary); 3 stanzas, same music
for first two, new music for third stanza
• melismatic
Renaissance Music:1475-1600
• Worldview: while the Church is still highly
influential, discoveries and new developments in
the arts and sciences
• Composers use the Mass in new ways, with
paraphrase, and imitative polyphony
• The melodies paraphrased in the Mass could be
sacred, from a hymn, or borrowed from secular
tunes. Chant becomes the main melody.
• Homophony emphasizes the text
The Magdalen, portrait (c. 1525) by Bernardino Luini, c. 1480-1532
This portrait reflects the Renaissance concern with the individual
Renaissance Music, cont.
• Listening examples:
• Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400-1474), 15th century,
Ave Maris Stella; stanzas of plainchant
alternate with homophony
• Josquin Depres (c. 1450-1521), Kyrie from the
Pange Lingua Mass. Early 16th century—early
high Renaissance. 3-part form due to the text.
This is a parody mass (uses paraphrase of an
existing song)
Portrait of a Humanist (c. 1520), by Sebastiano del Piombo (1485-1547), a
painter of the high Renaissance
(Late) High Renaissance
• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, (1525-1594)
• Listening Ex. Gloria from the Pope Marcellus
Mass: homophony
• Listening ex. Thomas Weelkes, (c. 1575-1623),
madrigal, As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill
Descending: secular, sections of homophony
alternate with sections of imitative polyphony,
word painting