What To Listen For

The Mass
 All masses consist of the Proper, or liturgical sections unique to the day and service in the liturgical calendar, and the Ordinary, or the sections that are the same in every mass.  Parts of both the Proper and the Ordinary were set to polyphonic music as early as the twelfth century.  The French composer Guillaume de Machaut wrote the first setting of the entire Ordinary about 1350—the Notre Dame Mass.  As the practice of polyphony ("many-voiced" music—each vocal part having equal weight in the harmony) was refined in the fourteenth century, the setting of the Mass became the highest challenge to the composer, as the symphony was in the nineteenth century, or istoriae were to the fifteenth century painter.

Most master composers of the Renaissance were from Northern Europe, where more emphasis was placed on the art form of music.  The greatest such master, Josquin Desprez, is comparable to his great contemporary Michelangelo in the visual arts.  Each was the master of a whole range of genres, techniques, and forms available to him.

The Renaissance Mass style calls for the same melodic material to be used in each of the five Ordinary sections: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus / Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.  Sometimes the music could come from a popular song, such as the love song "Se la Face Ay Pale" that Dufay chose, or the stern military piece "L'Homme Armé" that provided the music for many Renaissance mass composers, including Josquin.  On other occasions, Josquin could choose music from Gregorian material, as Lassus did in the Mass Osculetur Me, or even use a completely original melody, as Palestrina did in the Pope Marcellus Mass.  Listen to masses by two composers to contrast styles and effects, and consider the interesting Palestrina disc, comparing the Gregorian Benedictus Est with Palestrina's polyphonic application of the melodic material in a Mass and a Motet (see below).

Motets, Anthems and Lauds
The motet originated in the Middle Ages, when long melismas of essentially unpronounced tones in liturgical music were filled in by the upper voices singing completely unrelated words in faster time.  By the time of the Renaissance, such interpolations had become detached, and were performed as separate polyphonic pieces, using non-liturgical words for sacred motets, and poetry in the vernacular for secular motets.  The Gregorian influence remained in the lowest voice, the tenor , so named because it held on to the Gregorian melody.  Often, however, the melody was played in drone notes so slow as to make the tune unintelligible; usually that was the intention.  The motet would sometimes be named after the Gregorian material, all the same.  Motets were used in worship, and for public ceremonies.

The anthem is basically a motet in which the words are vernacular English rather than liturgical Latin.  This change occurred after Henry VIII declared himself supreme head of the English church, and the Church of England developed vernacular liturgy, including the Book of Common Prayer (1548).

Lauds are essentially Italian hymns, which means that they are strophic (repeated verses) and much simpler in musical demands on the singers than motets.  The emotional intensity and stylistic influences on more complex music are worth listening for.

Madrigals
The Madrigal is a polyphonic form for from four to six voices.  Usually two or three singers take each part.  Texts tend to the elaborately poetic and secular.  The form gained currency in Italy, and was then adapted with great success by English Renaissance composers, notably Thomas Morley, William Byrd, John Wilbye, John Dowland, and Thomas Weelkes.  Among the recorded collections are madrigals from different musical traditions; listen to a variety to discover differences in style and tone.  A common madrigal effect is word painting, in which the composer imitates the meaning of the text.  For instance, a phrase about sorrow may use heavy chromaticism, or words describing the sun rising may be set to an ascending series of notes.  The madrigals of Gesualdo are especially well known for their daring chromatic and rhythmic effects.

Songs and Chansons
These pieces, in contrast to madrigals, are homophonic .  That is, they feature a lead voice (vocal or instrumental), which receives harmonic and rhythmic support from the other voices.  This structure is like that of most Top 40 songs today.  In The Pleasures of the Royal Courts disc, the Florentine Carnival Songs of 1505 represent this style, and the carefree spirit in which these songs were usually conceived and performed.  An alternate tone came from the French chanson tradition, which usually expressed the melancholy of unfulfilled love common in the Courtly Love conventions of the twelfth century.  In these songs there is no tenor , no tie to liturgical traditions.  Rather, they evolve from folk traditions and often employ dance rhythms.  Sometimes the rhythms are those of rollicking peasant dances, sometimes of graceful court ceremonies.  Instrumental music of the time is usually song / chanson material in which all the parts are played on instruments other than the human voice.

How to Listen

I encourage all students to listen to a variety of Renaissance music on their own.  That's the best way to get a feel for it.  Try some of the classical music programming on WGMS or WETA locally, or WBJC in Baltimore.  Buy some CD's or tapes and play them in the car.  Simply expose yourself to the music to get a feel for it.

You may also want to try out the A/V department of Lauinger Library.  Some of the CD's that are available are listed below.  You can listen to them in the library.
 

Guillaume Dufay  (c. 1400-1474)

Dufay represents in music what the Limbourg Brothers do in painting: the expression of the Renaissance spirit in the shape of a late medieval style.  Dufay, like the Limbourgs, was for many years an artisan in the court of Burgundy, and environment dedicated to the full expression of refinement in the arts without regard to costs.  During much of his lifetime the Burgundian Court, located at Dijon in east central France, functioned as a quasi-autonomous political entity within France.  The Dukes were relations of the King of France (uncles and brothers usually), and until the middle of the fifteenth century were politically allied, more or less loosely, with the English.  France was not, obviously, a highly developed nation-state, and the Dukes of Burgundy had their own taxing authority.  True, they impoverished the peasants of the region to pursue their interests in fine painting, wine, food, and music.  But the legacy to Western culture was immense.  Such are the human ironies of culture.

Dufay was well trained in the late medieval musical style of his native France, and also took many trips to the great centers of church and Papal patronage in italy.  He was well placed to fuse the late medieval style of France with the early Italian Renaissance style, with its literary and humanist associations.  Stylistically, Dufay's music is melodically straightforward and structurally clear.  He used secular melodies for many of his masses and motets, thus establishing a secularization of religious music that would develop throughout the century.  He composed in several secular dance forms and in the chanson, or love song.

Dufay also excelled in the larger religious genres that interested his patrons.  The mass was the most important of these.  The five parts of the "Ordinary" of the mass—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus / Benedictus and Agnus Dei—were set to music appropriate to the words, but all sections were composed to the same basic melody.  This melody could be used in reverse, inverted, or reversed and inverted, as well as in short fragments.  Rhythms were also complex and often independent of the words.  Thus the apparently tight and undeviating form actually accommodated a wide range of stylistic variations.

The music of Dufay and his time is largely related to vocal performance.  The church music assumes four vocal ranges: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.  In the practice of the time, the higher parts are sung by boys, the lower by men.  Instruments may double the voices in some vocal passages, and may indeed substitute for voices on occasion.  But music was not thought of as an art form independent of singing.  Secular music, as well, was usually sung by one or several voices to the accompaniment of instruments.

When Pope Eugenius IV dedicated the Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore [Blessed Mary of the Flower] on march 25, 1436, he laid a golden rose on the altar.  There was a great festival and procession, as much civic as religious, including the Pope with triple tiara, seven cardinals, thirty-seven bishops and archbishops, and various political and popular officials, including the heads of all the local craft guilds.  For this great occasion Dufay composed an occasional motet, Nuper Rosarum Flores.  Like the cathedral dome in which the music finds its architectural counterpart, the motet's structure is based on medieval prototypes, and yet in its scale, clarity, and sheer humanistic, secular self-assertion it surpasses its sources with impressive effect.

Played in class:
Mass "Ave Regina Caelorum"  Miroslav Venhoda, Prague Madrigal Singers
 

TOP

Consort Music

Consort music is by definition composed for a set of similar instruments that together cover different ranges of pitch, for instance treble, tenor, and bass viols, all precursors of modern stringed instruments.  Such music was also commonly written for brass instruments and the human voice.  The genre began in England as simple court songs in the reign of Elizabeth I, and developed under King James I as ceremonial music with brass instruments, intimate chamber music with viols, and religious music for the Chapel Royal when voices and viols mixed.

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) was one of the foremost composers and keyboard instrumentalists of his generation.  From his early twenties to his death, he was the organist of the Chapel Royal.  In the context of liturgical and other religious uses, he composed a number of consort anthems, as well as keyboard and viol consort music.

The consort anthem See, see the Word is Incarnate reflects the highest evolution of the form.  It is divided into sections in which a single voice is heard with viols (the "verse"; the solo voice is called the "mean") and other parts in which all the musical parts are sung and often are doubled by viols (the "full" sections).  This form differs from "verse anthems" in that the accompaniment is provided by string instruments rather than the organ; it is not intended for worship, though the content is sacred.

The instrumental In Nomine á 5 represents an early foray into purely instrumental music.  A peculiarly English form, the polyphonic In Nomine was always based on the melody and rhythm of a long-note cantus firmus found in a mass by Taverner at the words "in nomine dominum" in the Benedictus.  This one is in five parts, and unusually effective in its expression of the musical material.  The tone is rather reflective and somber.

Played in class:
In Nomine a 5 for viols  The Occasional Byrd
Consort anthem "See, see, the Word is Incarnate"  Graham O' Reilly, Ensemble William Byrd
 

TOP

Florentine Carnival Music

This music is, as the name implies, simple, happy, and festive in spirit an occasion.  Beginning in the middle ages as choral music, it eventually gave rise to the Renaissance madrigal.  In itself, however, it became a characteristic expression of civic pride and unity.  Lorenzo the Magnificent wrote the words and music to several of these pieces, and like most such pieces his were polyphonic, with clear and simple chords and melodies, suitable for singing the straightforward words when all participants might not be completely sober.

Lorenzo died in 1492.  From that year until 1498 the Medici were banished from Florence, and the festive secular carnivals were replaced by the fervid zeal of pietistic religious revival, led by the monk Savanarola.  Under his influence, much of the "lascivious music" of the previous era was destroyed.  But elsewhere in Italy the movement toward more light-hearted and charming musical style continued, and it returned to Florence with the Medici in 1498.  In this new style, and essentially homorhythmic texture is emphasized by short, well demarcated phrases and a straightforward rhythm.   A very significant change in these songs is that the cantus firmus emphasis has disappeared, and the instruments accompanying the single vocal line are supplying simple chordal harmonies rather than their own melodic lines.

In this example we hear three songs woven together, much as they might have been sung at the time.  The rather elegant, light, delicate textures seem more suited for decorous celebrating at court than drunken revelry in the street.  The contents speak of lost and disappointed love [what else is new?], often in pastoral terms: "O traitor Hope!"; "I wanted to be yours forever"; "When will you go to the mountains?".

Played in class:
Salterello (anon. 14th C.)  Micrologus
"Tre fontane," istampita  (anon. 14th C.)  Micrologus
Three Carnival Songs c. 1505 by Paolo Scotto, Jac. Fo., and J. B. Zesso   David Munrow, The Early Music Consort of London
 

TOP

The English Madrigal

The English madrigal is perhaps the highest form of domestic musical expression.  This form reached its zenith in the later English Renaissance period of the courts of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I.

The madrigal is a polyphonic form of vocal music, which can be adapted to voices, instruments, and various combinations thereof.  There are usually four to six parts, of sufficient complexity to be challenging to the skilled amateur, but not requiring a professional level of ability for pleasurable performance.

There are two forms closely related to the madrigal itself, which is a setting of a single set of poetic lines.  The ballette is strophic, often with a refrain including the nonsense syllables "fa-la-la," and the canzonet, which is usually a vocal duet or trio of melodic rather than choral character.  All of these forms tend to emphasize the two favorite subjects of the poets of the time--love and sorrow (or both at once).  The words of the madrigal tend to be simple rather than complex, though some fairly eloquent lyrics are numbered among the more familiar English madrigals.

Thomas Weelkes, "As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending"  (1601)  6 voices
This light, brilliant example of the English madrigal was written for a collection of madrigals in praise of Queen Elizabeth, who loved such flattery.  Twenty-three English composers contributed madrigals set to different poems, all ending with the same refrain; "Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: 'long live fair Oriana!'"  Oriana was a mythical name for the Queen, and the nymphs and shepherds of Diana, the goddess of virginity, were her courtiers and ladies in waiting.  The word painting for this madrigal is high-spirited, intelligent, and often amusing.  For instance, the word "hill" is illustrated with high notes, the word "descending" with a fast downward scale, the phrase "all alone" by a single soprano voice.  The final two lines are especially magnificent, employing six parts in a lengthy setting of the last line.  Here we can easily imagine many more than six loyal voices cheering the Queen again and again in a spontaneous, irregular way, one after the other.  In the last line, Weelkes also puns on the word "long" by having the bass line sing that word over a period of four entire bars.

As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending
She spied a maiden Queen the same ascending,
Attended on by all the shepherds 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.
The sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana:
Long live fair Oriana!

Josquin Desprez 

Josquin and Palestrina represent the beginning and the end of Renaissance music, and reflect in their careers the values and controversies of their times. 

Josquin's life (c.1440-1521) spanned the Early and High Renaissance eras in Italy, where he spent most of his adult life.  Born in France, he had studied with teachers steeped in the late medieval and early renaissance traditions.  Patronage drew him to Milan (the Sforza family), papal Rome, and Ferrara (Duke Ercole I).  The fluent and flexible music of his Italian period is generally thought of as his best.

"There are several reasons," says Stanley Sadie, "why Josquin's motet [style] sounds so different from the motets of the fourteenth century.  The melodies are more flowing and wide-ranging, free of the formulaic patterns of plainsong.  The rhythms are more varied, less restricted by meter and by such devices as isorhythm.  The harmony is richer, intervals are more sonorous and chord progressions move more naturally. . . .  Dissonance has now gained an expressive value of its own and contributes greatly to the effect."

Josquin represents the musical equivalent of the emphasis on the individual in theology, philosophy and the visual arts.  He is the first great composer to explore consistently the expression of emotion in music.  While late medieval composers had worked to master the technical aspects of counterpoint structure, Josquin used this and other polyphonic devices in service of emotive interpretation of the text.  By stressing the expression of human feeling in the musical interpretation of a text, Josquin affirms the new humanistic attitudes of his time.

El Grillo
The Cricket is a good singer
Who holds a long note
Go ahead, drink and sing, cricket.
But he is not like the other birds,
Who sing a little
And then go elsewhere.
The cricket always stands firm.
When it is hottest,
He sings alone for love.

Petite Camusette
Little snub-nose, you've put me to death,
Robin and Marion go off to the pretty wood,
They go arm in arm, they've fallen asleep.
Little  snub-nose, you've put me to death.

Milles Regretz
A thousand regrets to forsake you
And to escape your amorous anger;
I have such great grief and sorrowful anguish
That one will see me shortly end my days.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Palestrina (c.1525-1594) reflects a different era from Josquin's, one in which freewheeling humanism was being reconsidered, especially in Church circles.  Despite the growing quantity and quality of composed secular music, the Mass remained the most significant form of musical composition, somewhat analogous to the symphony of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The motet, which could be sacred or secular, was another important form, because it allowed compositional interpretation of a specific and unique text.  Yet part of the counter-reformation concern was that even sacred music was too secular and distracting in its rich sensual appeal, and steps were taken to assure that the words of the mass or motet were paramount, and the music only to enhance them, not to be attractive in and of itself.

Palestrina excelled in the setting of the Mass.  He sometimes used sacred melodic sources, sometimes secular ones, and perhaps on a very few occasions used melodic materials of his own conception.  This is analogous to Renaissance painters' use of traditional mythological and Biblical topics as materials for their art.  One never simply painted what he saw, but rather made palpable and visual the stuff of traditional legend and learning.  Palestrina likewise did not invent the words he set or the music he set them to.  The challenge to the composer was to interpret familiar words in familiar melodic materials by creatively matching the melody to the words and developing it with the resources of a refined polyphonic style.

"Rather than attempt new methods he refined existing ones," Sadie tells us, "and in doing so produced some of the most glorious sacred music of the period, characterized by a perfect technique and a noble mode of expression.  Palestrina was the ultimate master of the imitative style, which forms the backbone of sixteenth-century polyphony and is probably the most characteristic feature of Renaissance music.  At the same time, stepwise (conjunct) melody is essential to Palestrina's style: his lines have no awkward leaps, no feeling of imbalance.  Each  dissonance is prepared and resolved according to the rules governing smooth progression.  There are few full cadences; instead, the phrases tend to overlap and form a 'seamless' texture, in which the equality of voices and their mutual balance give the music a perfect proportion."

In Palestrina, then, expression yields top priority to refinement, and boldness to restraint.  Having perfected the  style of the Renaissance, Palestrina makes it imperative that his successors chart a new course.  And they did just that, as Monteverdi and Gabrieli move forward into the Baroque with their music of drama, grandeur, and passion.  In this, they are like the late Renaissance writers in England, Shakespeare and Donne principal among them.
 

TOP

Reference 
Stanley Sadie, Music Guide: An Introduction.  Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1986.
 

TOP

Terms

Canon : Strict imitative counterpoint, in qwhich a melody stated in one voice is imitated in its entirety by a second voice, which enters before the first one has finished.

Cantus firmus :  A pre-existing melody used as a basis for polyphonic compositions in which new melodies are added above and/or below the cantus firmus.

Chanson : Aristocratic homophonic song.

Chordal :  Music in which the chords (three or more tones sounded simultaneously) are more important than the melody (sequence of tones).

Counterpoint :  The combination of two or more independent melodic lines into a single musical fabric; polyphony.

Gregorian :  Pertaining to the standard Roman Catholic liturgy, as regularized by Pope Gregory the Great (6th C.).

Homophonic :  Music having a single melodic line with chordal harmonies.

Homorhythmic :  Music having one rhythmic structure.

Mass :  Musical setting of the Ordinary of the Roman liturgy: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Benedictus and Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.

Melisma :  A musical setting of one sung syllable in many notes, creating an effect of unpronounced vowel-based vocal tone.

Motet : Polyphonic setting of lyrical (often liturgical or religious) text, usually in Latin.

Ordinary: The sections that are the same in every mass (see Mass above).

Plainchant / Plainsong:  Monophonic liturgical music, from early medieval Christian era.

Polyphonic :  Music having more than one voice of equal importance.  Most music lies on a spectrum somewhere between extreme polyphony and extreme homophony.

Proper: Liturgical sections unique to the day and service in the liturgical calendar.

Strophic:  Poetry organized into regular stanzas with repeated patterns of line length, rhythm, and rhyme.

Tenor: The lowest part of medieval polyphony, so named because it held on to the Gregorian melody.

Vernacular:  Words written in the local language, rather than the international religious and scholarly language of Latin.
 

 

TOP

Maintained by Arnold Bradford  Last update: 7/11/00