Transcript Renaissance Music - HCC Learning Web

Renaissance Music
1400-1600
Overview
• Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became
increasingly elaborate with highly independent
voices throughout the 14th century: the
beginning of the 15th century showed
simplification, with the voices often striving for
smoothness.
• This was possible because of a greatly increased
vocal range in music – in the Middle Ages, the
narrow range made necessary frequent crossing
of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast
between them.
Genres
• Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire
Renaissance period were masses and motets, with some other
developments towards the end, especially as composers of sacred
music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal) for their
own designs.
• Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale
spirituale, and the laude.
• During the period, secular music had an increasing distribution,
with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about
assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more
widely available, much more has survived from this era than from
the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular
music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost. Secular music
included songs for one or many voices, forms such as the frottola,
chanson and madrigal.
• Purely instrumental music included consort
music for recorder or viol and other
instruments, and dances for various
ensembles. Common genres were the toccata,
the prelude, the ricercar, the canzona, and
intabulation (intavolatura, intabulierung).
Instrumental ensembles for dances might play
a basse danse (or bassedanza), a pavane, a
galliard, an allemande, or a courante.
• Towards the end of the period, the early
dramatic precursors of opera such as monody,
the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are
seen.
Characteristics
• Word Painting
– Close relationship between words and music—
musical representation of specific poetic images.
– Usually moderate, balanced, no extreme contrasts
of dynamics, tone color or rhythm
• Texture is chiefly polyphonic
– typical choral piece has four, five, or six voices
with imitation
• Rhythm is more gentle flow than a sharply
defined beat
Sacred Music
• The two main forms of sacred Renaissance
music are the motet and the mass
– Both are alike in style, but a mass is a longer
composition
– Motet is a polyphonic choral work set to a sacred
Latin text other than the ordinary of the mass.
– The Mass is a polyphonic choral composition
made up of five sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, and Agnus Dei
Josquin Desprez (1440-1521)
• A contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and
Christopher Columbus
• Usually considered to be the
central figure of the Franco-Flemish
school. Josquin is widely considered
by music scholars to be the first
master of the high Renaissance style of
polyphonic vocal music that was emerging
during his lifetime.
• Josquin wrote both sacred and secular music, and in all
of the significant vocal forms of the age, including
masses, motets, chansons and frottole.
• During the 16th century, he was praised for both his
supreme melodic gift and his use of ingenious technical
devices.
• Josquin wrote towards the end of the period in which
the mass was the predominant form of sacred
composition in Europe.
• The mass, as it had developed through the 15th
century, was a long, multi-section form, with
opportunities for large-scale structure and organization
not possible in the other forms such as the motet.
Josquin wrote some of the most famous examples of
the genre, most using some kind of cyclic organization.
• Josquin was fond of canonic techniques, as were
many other composers of his generation, and canon
appears in all of his masses, sometimes to the
exclusion of other structural devices.
Motet
• Josquin's motet style varied from almost strictly
homophonic settings with block chords and syllabic
text declamation to highly ornate contrapuntal
fantasias, to the psalm settings which combined these
extremes with the addition of rhetorical figures and
text-painting that foreshadowed the later development
of the madrigal.
• He wrote many of his motets for four voices, an
ensemble size which had become the compositional
norm around 1500, and he also was a considerable
innovator in writing motets for five and six voices.
• Listening Example: Desprez Ave Maria…virgo serena
• Josquin frequently used imitation, especially paired imitation,
in writing his motets, with sections akin to fugal expositions
occurring on successive lines of the text he was setting.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
(1525-1594)
• an Italian Renaissance composer
of sacred music and the best-known
16th-century representative of the
Roman school of musical composition.
He had a lasting influence on the
development of church music, and his
work has often been seen as the
culmination of Renaissance polyphony.
• A devoted Catholic, Palestrina was organist of the
principal church (St. Agapito) of his native city,
and in 1551 he became maestro di cappella at
the Cappella Giulia, the papal choir at St Peter's.
• Palestrina’s music includes 104 masses and some
450 other sacred works.
• One of his most enduring works is the Missa
Papae Marcelli (Pope Marcellus Mass), which
according to legend was composed in order to
persuade the Council of Trent that a draconian
ban on the polyphonic treatment of text in sacred
music (as opposed, that is, to a more directly
intelligible homophonic treatment) was
unnecessary.
– Council of Trent: discouraged excessively complex
polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text.
Pope Marcellus Mass
• Palestrina’s most famous mass, written for an
a cappella choir of six voice parts: soprano,
alto, two tenors, and two basses.
• Polyphonic texture, each part constantly
imitate each other.
• Fuller than Josquin’s Ave Maria, flow smoothly
• The text is short
– 1. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
– 2. Christe eleison, Christ, have mercy.
– 3. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Secular Music
• Vocal Music
– Written for groups of solo voices and for solo
voice with the accompaniment of one or more
instruments.
– Word Painting was common
– The madrigal: a piece for several solo voices set to
a short poem, usually about love.
• Listening: Thomas Weelkes As Vesta Was Descending
(1601)
Instrumental Music
• Still subordinate to vocal music, instrumental music did
become more important during the Renaissance.
• Instrumental groups performed polyphonic vocal
pieces, which were often published with the indication
to be sung or played.
• Soloists used the harpsichord, organ, or lute to play
simple arrangements of vocal works.
• Much of instrumental music was intended for dancing.
Court dances were often performed in pairs. A favorite
pair was the stately pavane, in duple meter, and the
lively galliard, in triple meter.