Music.

Inspired by Pythagoras, his ideas were now critically examined and expanded on for the first
time in nearly 2000 years. On top of this, the Greek philosophers ideal about music and its expressive power
were taken to heart by Renaissance composers who sought to create more expressive and meaningful music
based on the model of what the Greek philosophers said Greek music was capable of doing.

Greek music was seen as a mysterious and magical art with the power to change the face of nature
and move souls of human kind. It was seen as a moral and arithmetic truth which embodied the order, truth
and beauty of the cosmos, the universe.

While the ruling princes and oligarchies of Italy were the principal patrons of the new and
increasingly secular and frankly humanistic music of the Renaissance, the spirit of the Renaissance was not
lost on the Catholic church either. The church fathers sought to create a music that was more human, more
intimate, more emotionally expressive than the church music of earlier times.

It doesnt matter whether youre an aristocrat, a secular ruler, artist, or clergy. Those who read
ancient literature asked themselves, why their early Renaissance music did not move them the way the
ancient Greeks said. The spirit of the Renaissance demanded more expressiveness, more communicative
music. That is the question of the Renaissance composer: how do you do that?

Some general statements about the nature of Renaissance music:

1) music should move the emotions. Two solutions: articulation (musica reservata), the words must be
clearly and unambiguously projected, rhythm should follow the rhythm of the words.
2) music should reflect the meaning of the spoken word (word painting)

Articulation. If the words are to be clear the music cannot be overly melismatic. If the melismas are
too long, we find it difficult to connect syllables therefore it becomes difficult to understand words.
Remember that we are still in a very vocal culture. We will not encounter instrumental music as a separate
genre for around 200 years more. So the word is the message and it has to be clear.

Josquin Desprez: born 1440 died 1521, hailed by his contemporaries as:

The best of the composers of our time; the father of musicians; Martin Luther said He is the master of the
notes, they must do as he wills. As for other composers they must do as the notes will.

Many years after his death Josquins music was still being held as the best during his age.
His style made use of imitation, wherein each voice entered one after another instead of all parts
singing continuously. This made the words sung by each part easier to hear.

Hailed as the best composer of the High Renaissance.

His music is fluid, not particularly rhythmic, smooth, carefully conjuct, and made use of controlled polyphony,
with occasional use of homophony.

the most important compositional genre of the Renaissance was the musical setting of the
CatholicMass. The Mass was, to the Renaissance composer, what the symphony was to the classical
composers, and what the opera was to the 19th century composer, and that is the ultimate monumental test
of the their compositional prowess. The great composers of the Renaissance were also the great composers
of the Mass. Josquin Desprez had 18 different settings of the Mass.

When they started composing for the mass, they were faced with major compositional challenges.
The Mass had many parts, so the dilemma was to decide which parts were to be set to music. First of all lets
explain the origin of the word mass.

Mass means misa, taken from the last section of the ceremony that says Ita misa est. This is the
formula by which the congregation is dismissed. Now there is what we call the High Mass or Misa
Solemnis, which is the full, no-holds barred ceremonial form for celebrating the mass. The high mass has
many different sections and ceremonies, more than 20, some spoken, some sung. So which sections should
be set to music?

We can divide these many sections into two categories, the Mass Proper and the Mass Ordinary.
The proper are those sections that change from day to day depending on the liturgy year. These are not
fixed text. The other section is the ordinary, and these will not change, they are the same every single
day: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo(profession of faith), Sanctus (holy, holy, holy),Agnus Dei, Ita Misa Est (let us
bless the Lord and be dismissed). Why do we need to know the parts of the ordinary? Because it will be
the ordinary that the composers will choose to set to music.

These composers will try to unite these diverse and separate parts of the ordinary and link them
melodically.

Why was there a need to restructure the music of the Mass? The Catholic church was very much
under attack by the reformation. Particularly its music, which was already a far cry from the original setting
of the plainchant. Complaints were voiced about the use of secular tunes, the complicated polyphony that
made the words difficult to understand, the use of noisy instruments, the irreverence of the singers. It was
the Council of Trent that led this counter-reformation. The council directed that the music be purged of
barbarism, obscurities, contrarieties, and superfluities, so that the House of God might rightly be called a
house of prayer.

We were discussing how the Mass became a five-section form: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and
Agnus Dei which are collectively known as the Mass ordinary. These parts were very different in length,
served very different liturgical purposes, and came at widely separated times in the actual service. The
challenge for the Renaissance composer now is how to unify these disparate sections into a single, coherent
compositional whole.

The solution met by renaissance composers was to use the same plainchant in all five sections to
underlie the Mass. The beauty of this is that:

1. The Word of God, the hand of God present in these ancient and time-honored plainchants will be present
in your otherwise modern composition, linking you with the great past and giving you contact with a certain
holiness that you may not otherwise have.
2. Also it will unify melodically all five sections of the Mass to some degree or another. There will be thematic
unity and religiosity.

Putting the plainchant as the thematic material was done in three different ways:
1. Cantus firmus (fixed melody) Mass what happens is that a plainchant, in its original medieval form
is present usually in the tenor voice (in SATB). This is going to affect profoundly the nature of the music
being written around the plainchant. Most of these plainchants lack rhythmic contour and they aremodal,
they lack the sound of more modern major and minor scales and as a result the music written around them
will sound older and more archaic.
2. Paraphrase Mass (meaning to restate, rephrase, say it in another way) Josquin was the great
master of the paraphrase Mass. The plainchant that underlies the entire Mass has been modernized
according to the taste of the Renaissance: it has been rhythmicized, notes have been added to it, so that the
plainchant doesnt anymore like a plainchant, but a more modern tune.
3. Imitation Mass was also based on a pre-existing melody, but this time it can be any melody you want.
It can be a pop tune, a dance piece, anything. What would be the point of using secular music within a
religious work? First of all, accessibility, recognisability (if it is easily recognized anyone can follow the tune
easily), enjoyment. One problem that arose was that it was deemed subversive, anti-religious.