RENAISSANCE AND

REFORMATION
1400 –1600
This period saw huge growth in the quality and style of sacred music,
but it saw also witnessed the Catholic Church’s influence wane with the
Reformation.
The arrival of printed music made it available to people outside the
Church and musicians were able to learn from other traditions. The rise
of instrumental music inspired composers to write more complex
sacred and secular music and demanded new techniques and sounds.
Composers became increasingly aware of the expressive power of music,
especially when writing vocal music, and sought to find structures and styles
that would reflect more closely the meaning of the texts they set.

SONGS OF LOVE
Performed at banquets, royal entrances, tournaments, and other
courtly entertainments, Renaissance songs embraced new and
intricate settings for several parts as well as simpler forms rooted in
local traditions. However varied the music, its chief subject was
love—especially hopeless or unrequited love.
In his Book of the Courtier (1528), the Italian courtier, soldier,
diplomat, and author Baldassarre Castiglione revealed the
importance of song in court culture. He states that every self-
respecting courtier should be able to take part in singing, and
preferably accompany himself or others on the lute. At the very
least, he should be familiar with the substantial repertoire of songs
performed in court circles and quote from them as part of witty and
entertaining conversation. In Italy, the most common song form
during the late 15th and early 16th centuries was the frottola.

Repeating the same melody for each verse, it set lighthearted love
poetry for three or four voices, or for a solo voice to the
accompaniment of a lute or viols. Its two leading composers
were Marchetto Cara and Bartolomeo Tromboncino at the court of
Isabella d’Este in Mantua. Collections of frottolas by these and
other, often anonymous, composers were among the first music
books to be printed. They contributed to the evolution of the
madrigal, the major new song form that was to emerge in 16th-
century Italy.
In the 16th century, composers and performers at court and at
home were increasingly drawn to expressing the meaning of
the text, through new song forms such as the madrigal.