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Renaissance music

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Musical genres, styles,
eras and events

   History of European art music
   Medieval                     (476 – 1400)
   Renaissance                  (1400 – 1600)
   Baroque                      (1600 – 1760)
   Classical                    (1730 – 1820)
   Romantic                     (1815 – 1910)
   20th century                 (1900 – 2000)
   Contemporary classical music (1975 – present)

   Renaissance music is European classical music written during the
   Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600. Defining the beginning of the
   era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking
   during the 15th century. Additionally, the process by which music
   acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one, but 1400 is
   used here.

Overview

Style and trends

   "The School of Athens" by Raphael
   Renaissance
   Topics

   Architecture
   Dance
   Literature
   Music
   Painting
   Philosophy
   Science
   Warfare
   Regions

   England
   France
   Germany
   Italy
   Netherlands
   Northern Europe
   Poland
   Spain

   The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is
   one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art
   music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see
   interval). 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.

   The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music
   began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased
   use of root motions of fifths. This has since developed into one of the
   defining characteristics of tonality.

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 increasingly wide 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.

   Secular vocal genres included the madrigal, the frottola, the caccia,
   the chanson in several forms ( rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade,
   musique mesurée), the canzonetta, the villancico, the villanella, the
   villotta, and the lute song.

   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.

Theory and notation

   According to Margaret Bent (1998), "Renaissance notation is
   under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form
   it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its
   original openness."
   Ockeghem, Kyrie "Au travail suis," excerpt
   Enlarge
   Ockeghem, Kyrie "Au travail suis," excerpt

   Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores
   were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were
   generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was
   the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova
   (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for
   each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent
   to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note-value and a
   measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the
   same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal
   either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a
   "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the
   next-smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note")
   to each semi-breve. These different permutations were called
   "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve-semibreve
   relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the
   semibreve-minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each
   other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect."
   Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in
   value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively} when preceded or
   followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as
   quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural
   notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than
   vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching
   required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times,
   written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in
   notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enfore the aforementioned
   imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical
   changes.

   Accidentals were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering
   notations ( tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would
   have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this
   and other information necessary to read a score, "what modern notation
   requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without
   notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." See musica ficta. A
   singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas
   with other parts in mind, and when singing together musicians would
   avoid parallel octaves and fifths or alter their cadential parts in
   light of decisions by other musicians (Bent, 1998).

   Interestingly, it is through contemporary tablatures for various
   plucked instruments that we have gained much information about what
   accidentals were performed by the original practitioners.

   For information on specific theorists, see Johannes Tinctoris,
   Franchinus Gaffurius, Heinrich Glarean, Pietro Aron, Nicola Vicentino,
   Tomás de Santa María, Gioseffo Zarlino, Vicente Lusitano, Vincenzo
   Galilei, Giovanni Artusi, Johannes Nucius, and Pietro Cerone.

   Composers of the Renaissance [USEMAP:49052.png]

Early Renaissance music (1400 - 1467)

   The Burgundian School of composers, led by Guillaume Dufay,
   demonstrated characteristics of both the late Medieval era and the
   early Renaissance (see Medieval music). This group gradually dropped
   the late Medieval period's complex devices of isorhythm and extreme
   syncopation, resulting in a more limpid and flowing style. What their
   music "lost" in rhythmic complexity, however, it gained in rhythmic
   vitality, as a "drive to the cadence" became a prominent feature around
   mid-century.

Middle Renaissance music (1467 - 1534)

   Towards the end of the 15th century, polyphonic sacred music (as
   exemplified in the masses of Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht) had
   once again become more complex, in a manner that can perhaps be seen as
   correlating to the stunning detail in the painting at the time.
   Ockeghem, particularly, was fond of canon, both contrapuntal and
   mensural. He even composed a mass in which all the parts are derived
   canonically from one musical line.

   It was in the opening decades of the next century that music felt in a
   tactus (think of the modern time signature) of two
   semibreves-to-a-breve began to be as common as that with three
   semibreves-to-a-breve, as had prevailed prior to that time.

   In the early 16th century, there is another trend towards
   simplification, as can be seen to some degree in the work of Josquin
   des Prez and his comtemporaries in the Franco-Flemish School, then
   later in that of G. P. Palestrina, who was partially reacting to the
   strictures of the Council of Trent, which discouraged excessively
   complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text. Early
   16th-century Franco-Flemmings moved away from the complex systems of
   canonic and other mensural play of Ockeghem's generation, tending
   toward points of imitation and duet or trio sections within an overall
   texture that grew to five and six voices. They also began, even before
   the Tridentine reforms, to insert ever-lengthening passages of
   homophony, to underline important text or points of articulation.
   Palestrina, on the other hand, came to cultivate a freely flowing style
   of counterpoint in a thick, rich texture within which consonance
   followed dissonance on a nearly beat-by-beat basis, and suspensions
   ruled the day (see counterpoint). By now, tactus was generally two
   semibreves per breve with three per breve used for special effects and
   climactic sections; this was a nearly exact reversal of the prevailing
   technique a century before.

Late Renaissance music (1534 - 1600)

   In Venice, from about 1534 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral
   style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous
   music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers,
   brass and strings in different spatial locations in the Basilica San
   Marco di Venezia (see Venetian School). These multiple revolutions
   spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany
   and then moving to Spain, France and England somewhat later,
   demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the Baroque musical
   era.

   The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church
   music, in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance into early Baroque eras.
   Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the
   papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically
   they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a
   concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most
   famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da
   Palestrina, whose name has been associated for four hundred years with
   smooth, clear, polyphonic perfection.

   The brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England,
   mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them,
   is known as the English Madrigal School. The English madrigals were a
   cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either
   copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to
   six voices.

   Musica reservata is a term referring to either a style or a performance
   practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter, mainly in Italy and
   southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense
   emotional expression of sung text.

   In addition, many composers observed a division in their own works
   between a prima pratica (music in the Renaissance polyphonic style) and
   a seconda pratica (music in the new style) during the first part of the
   17th century.

Mannerism

   In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closes, an extremely
   manneristic style develops. In secular music, especially in the
   madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme
   chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and
   Gesualdo). The term "mannerism" derives from art history.

Transition to the Baroque

   Beginning in Florence, there was an attempt to revive the dramatic and
   musical forms of Ancient Greece, through the means of monody, a form of
   declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a more extreme contrast
   with the preceding polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was
   also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. These musicians were
   known as the Florentine Camerata.

   We have already noted some of the musical developments that helped to
   usher in the Baroque, but for further explanation of this transition,
   see polychoral, concertato, monody, madrigal, and opera, as well as the
   works given under "Sources and further reading."

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