Essay

10-page-article - Renaissance music Due Friday March 9

- What;s the article about
- How does author introduce the subject to people
- What are the main arguments and main points?
- Are there any subsidiary arguments?
- What is the conclusion they came to
Writing style
- Correct grammar
- Sentence structures
- Variety of sentence structures
- Active verbs…. Avoid to be, it is and there are constructions
Paragraph structure
- Onlines and logical structure pklanings
- Topic sentences, conclusion sentences
- Fluency and smooth transitions between paragraphs
- Variety in sentence structures
Overall structure
- Do an essay outline before starting
- Organise essay into topics
- First paragraph of the essay introduces the subject of the article
- Concluding paragraph sums up your main points
THERE WON'T BE CITINGS OF ANYTHING choose a style MLA etc. and go with it
Title page (name and student #) Font size 12

RENAISSANCE MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!
- Rebirth
- Moving into the 15th century
- New spirit in Europe, the change is called renaissance - rebirth 1st used by
French historian, Jules MIchelet, in 1855
- Gradual change from medieval thought to intellectual patterns of the new age
- Took place in difffernet times in different countries
- Most important cultural development - HUMANISM - revival of ancient culture,
looking back to classical antiquity (acient Greece and Rome before burth of
Christ) restart in Itally and spreads throughout Europe in the 15th century, aided
by the invention of PRINTING
- Quickness of the spread
 - Moving further awayf rom the church being veerything in life, moral philosophy
etc
- An age of increased secularism
- Break with reliance on past authorities
- the present is the most important, Tinctoris (1475) no music composed before
1440 was worth hearing
- Large increase in musical activity
- More written and performed than ever before
- Growing middle class has more and more lessure time
ENGLISH MUSIC
- England - influenced the continent
- Constantly invading Europe
- Ruled huge tracks of France
- English composers influenced continential composers in styles
- Less use of dissonance , independent lines, different texts
- Fewer open sounds (fewer open 5ths, and octaves, more 3rds and 6ths)
- Imrpovisational practices
DISCANTING
- Start with a cantus firmus (songs that have already been written)
- Chordal style
- Contrary motion
- 3rds and 6ths in succession (3 or 4 in a row)
- Distinctly English flavour becaus eof the emphasis on imperfect consonance
- This style develops into FABURDEN in England and FAUXBOURDON on the
continent
FABURDEN
- One singer sang the chant
- Another improvised a part a 3rd or 5th below
- Didn't like consecutive 5ths, therefore mostly 3rds
- Third singer improvised a line a 4th above
FAUXBOURDON
- Added to the bass (that's what that meant)
- Slightly different technique on the continent
- Ornamented chant tune as the top voice
- A composed lowest part, mostly a 6th below
- Improvised middle part, a 4th below the chant
OLD HALL MANUSCRIPT
- Main source for ENglish music (1370-1420)
- 147 pieces
 - Mainly settings of ordinary of the mass, but some hymns and isorhythmic motets
- Many of these in discant style
- On the continent, the english discant style became known as ‘la contenance
angloise’ (English countenance or qualities)

JOHN DUNSTAPLE (late 14th to mid 15th century)

- One of the founders of the new style
- Lived in france, served DUke of Bedford, regent of France 1422-35
- Composed isorhythmic motets, mass settings, miscellaneous liturgical texts,
secular songs
- Also wrote 3-part sacred music on religious texts - some based on borrowed
melodies - others freely composed e.g. QUam pulchra es - A MOTET
- QUAM PULCHRA ES
- Motet
- Broader meaning in early 15th century
- Any polyphonic composition on a Latin text other than the ordinary fo the
mass
- Applied to settings in the new style
- Compositional style
- Voices equal in importance
- Simultaneous text declamation
- Animated homophony (mostly homophonic with some light counterpoint)
- Structure : one line of text from one phrase of music cadences to close each
cadences
- Use of noema
- A purely homophonic section with polyphony
- Draws attention to important words in the text
- How did they think about cadences in the 15th century??
- What was used at the cadence points and what wasn’t
CADENCE (clausula)
- Definition: a resting point in which two voices, one descending by step and the
other rising by step, proceed to an octave or unison
- What a cadence is: is a resting point, not much different from the pause. But two
voices
- Two voices going into an octave or unison, each going different direction (one A
and one D)
- Hearing the two voices going by step to the cadence
APPROACHES TO CADENCES
- Three ways - approaching by the closet imperfect intervals
 - Sub Semitone
- Suprasemiton
- Subtone
CADENCES in 4-part textures
- Perfect
- All voices from perfect consonances with the cadence-note . all perfect
intervals .
- Perfect intervals
- Imperfect
- A third or sixth is heard in the vertical sonority at the cadence-note, that
is, in a voice other than the two which control the cadence
- Consonances that are not perfect 5ths or octaves or unisons
- Avoided
- The two voices controlling the cadence appear to be proceeding to a
perfect cadence but one of them turns elsewhere instead
- Interrupted
- One or more voices drop out at the cadence . even weaker and that just
stops
- One voice drops out
- Feigned
- Another voice, instead of the expected one, proceeds to the cadence-note
instead
- By leap
- One or both voices leap to the cadence note (when you compose yourself to
a corner and needs a cadence)

FURTHER PRACTICES
- The effect of a clausula may be intensified by
- A dissonant suspension
- A subsemitonal approach
- Ornamental figuration
- Or any combination of these
- The conclusiveness of a cadence may be reinforced by the lowest sounding voice
descending a fifth or rising a fourth
Lute
- Was the most important instrument
- Strings making companies made ropes for ships
- Made of cat/sheep guts
- Accompaniment for singers/instrumentalists to the 18th century
 - They had tenor, alto and soprano lutes
English Influence
- Music of Dunstaple and contemporaries began to influence continental
composers around 1430
- Most importantly - gilles Binchois - guillaume dufay
- Along with dunstaple, they are regarded as the founders of the new style
-