THE RENAISSANCE

LECTURE 2
 THE RENAISSANCE
LECTURE 2

• Flanco-Flemish composers, the second generation

• The Mass Cycle (Imitation mass and Paraphrase mass)

• The Frottola

• The Madrigal and its development

 FRANCO-FLEMISH COMPOSERS
DIFFERENT GENERATIONS

Prominent in this period were composers from northern France,

Flanders, and the Netherlands, who served courts and cities
throughout France, the Low Countries, Italy, Spain, Germany,
Bohemia, and Austria.

‘First’ two generations:

1. Composers born around 1420 and active until the 1490s, who
combined the new international language and some surviving
medieval traits.
2. Composers born around 1450 and active through about 1520,
with a growing interest in imitative and homophonic textures, and
a new focus on fitting music to words with appropriate
declamation, imagery, and expression.
 THE SECOND GENERATION
WHO’S WHO

Jacob Obrecht (1457/8-1505)

Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450-1517)
Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450-1521)

• All were born and trained in the Low Countries.

• All travelled widely, working and courts and churches in
different parts of Europe, including Italy.
• Their careers illustrate the lively interchange between
Franco-Flemish and Italian centres.
 THE SECOND GENERATION
OVERVIEW

• Their music combines northern and southern elements:

• serious tone, focus on structure, intricate polyphony, rhythmic
variety, and flowing, melismatic melodies of the north.
• lighter mood, homophonic textures, more dancelike rhythms,
and more clearly articulated phrases of the Italians.

• Composers active in 1480-1520 shared many elements of style.

• Structure of vocal works was now determined by the text.
• Polyphonic parts were even more singable and equal in
importance than in the previous generation.
• Four-voice texture was now standard, and five or six voices
were sometimes employed as well.
 THE SECOND GENERATION
TEXTURE AND HARMONY

• Imitative counterpoint and homophony were the most

common textures (more imitative and more homophonic
than that of Ockeghem’s generation).
• Imitation typically involved all voices, a procedure known
as pervading imitation to distinguish it from the imitation
between only certain voices in earlier styles.
• All the parts were composed phrase by phrase (rather
than layering voices around the cantus-tenor duet).
• The foundational role of the tenor was gradually replaced
by the bass, as the lowest voice in the harmony.
• Full triadic sonorities predominated throughout and began
to replace open fifths and octaves at cadences.
 THE SECOND GENERATION
STRUCTURE AND GENRE

• Borrowed melodies were still used frequently but were

more often distributed among the voices, rather than
confined to the tenor or superius.
• The mass and motet continued to be the predominant
sacred genres. Breaking away from the formes fixes,
composers created chansons in new ways.
• Instrumental works became more common, though still
far outnumbered by vocal works.
• Hidden structural devices gave way to transparent
forms based on a succession of clearly articulated
phrases, whether imitative or homophonic in texture.
 HEINRICH ISAAC (1450-1517)

Worked for two of the most

important patrons in
Europe, serving as singer
and composer for Lorenzo
de Medici in Florence from
about 1484 to 1492 and as
court composer for Holy
Roman emperor
Maximilian I at Vienna and
Innsbruck from 1497.
 HEINRICH ISAAC (1450-1517)
INNSBRUCK, ICH MUSS DICH LASSEN

Innsbruck, ich muss dich

lassen (ca. 1530)
• the melody is in the
superius.
• the other parts move in
very similar rhythm, with
rests separating each
phrase, and cadences
resolve to full triads
rather than open
sonorities.
HEINRICH ISAAC (1450-1517)
INNSBRUCK, ICH MUSS DICH LASSEN
JOSQUIN DES PREZ (1450-1521)

• Greatly renowned and highly

influential.
• His compositions appear in a large
number of manuscripts and printed
anthologies.
• Contemporaries hailed Josquin as the
“the best of the composers of our time,”
and after his death humanist scholars
compared him to the poet Virgil and the
painter and sculptor Michelangelo as
an artist without peer in his particular
art.
 JOSQUIN – MOTETS
DEPICTION AND EXPRESSION

• Josquin wrote more than fifty motets, which exemplify his

style.
• Masses were normally based on existing music and
always set the same text.
• Motets were freely composed and their texts were quite
varied, drawn from the Mass Proper or other sources.
• Josquin is especially renowned for reflecting the meaning
of the words, in two ways: through text depiction, using
musical gestures to reinforce the images in the text; and
through text expression, conveying through music the
emotions suggested by the text. Even more than earlier
composers.
 JOSQUIN – MOTETS
AVE MARIA … VIRGO SERENA

• Ave Maria … virgo serena (ca. 1475-85?), one of his

earliest and most popular motets
• The form of the text is highlighted by giving each
segment a unique musical treatment and a concluding
cadence on the tonal center C.
• The texture is constantly changing.
• Opens with several overlapping points of imitation,
then shifts to two, three, and all four voices in
relatively homophonic phrases; later passages are
equally varied. Where it is imitative, the technique is
pervading imitation, since all voices are involved.
 JOSQUIN – MOTETS
AVE MARIA … VIRGO SERENA
1. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Virgo serena.
1. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, serene Virgin.

2. Ave cujus conceptio, Solemni plena gaudio, Coelestia, terrestria Nova replet laetitia.
2. Hail thou whose conception, full of solemn joy, fills heaven and earth with new happiness.

3. Ave cujus nativitas, Nostra fuit solemnitas, Ut Lucifer lux oriens, Verum solem praeveniens.
3. Hail thou whose birth was our solemn celebration, like Lucifer the Eastern (star or light)
foretelling the rising of the true Sun.

4. Ave pia humilitas, Sine viro foecunditas, Cujus annuntiatio Nostra fuit salvatio.
4. Hail blessed humility, fruitful without man (meaning with original sin), thou whose annunciation
has been our salvation.

5. Ave vera virginitas, Immaculata castitas, Cujus purificatio Nostra fuit purgatio.
5. Hail true virginity, immaculate chastity, whose purification has been our cleansing.

6. Ave praeclara omnibus Angelicis virtutibus, Cujus fuit assumptio, Nostra glorificatio.
6. Hail thou most glorious among all angelic virtues, she whose assumption has been our
glorification.

7. O Mater Dei, Memento Mei. Amen.

7. O Mother of God, remember me. Amen.
JOSQUIN – MOTETS
AVE MARIA … VIRGO SERENA
 Cantus-
Cantus-firmus
TYPE: firmus/imitation Imitation mass Paraphrase mass
mass
mass

Anonymous, Du Fay, Missa Se la Josquin, Missa Josquin, Missa

EXAMPLE:
Missa Caput face ay pale Fortuna desperata Pange lingua

Tenor plus other

BORROWED Chant or other All voices from
voices from Chant melody
MATERIAL: melody polyphonic work
polyphonic work

Tenor in tenor of
WHERE IS IT
Tenor of mass mass, others in All voices of mass All voices of mass
USED?
other voices

Tenor used as
In long notes, as Motives, points of
HOW IS IT structural cantus Paraphrased and
structural cantus imitation, or other
USED? firmus, others with notes added
firmus elements reworked
reworked

Stratified, with Imitative, with Imitative, with

Stratified, with tenor
MAIN TEXTURE tenor as structural some homophonic some homophonic
as structural voice
voice passages passages
 JOSQUIN – MASSES
1. IMITATION MASS

• A new approach to basing a mass on a polyphonic work.

• Instead of using one voice as a cantus firmus, the
composer borrows from all voices of the model, reworking
characteristic motives, points of imitation, and general
structure in each movement of the mass.
• This is an imitation mass. Around 1520, the imitation
mass began to displace the cantus firmus mass as the
most common type.
 ‘FORTUNA DESPERATA’

Fortuna desperata iniquitous and maledicted

Iniqua e maledecta who blackened the good
Che de tal dona electa name
La fama hai denigrata. of a woman beyond
compare.

Desperate fate,
 JOSQUIN – MASSES
1. IMITATION MASS

Missa Fortuna desperata: Kyrie and Agnus Dei (1500?)

• The opening is derived from all three voices of the
chanson Fortuna desperata.
• Josquin shifts the music from duple to triple meter (and
back again) in the Kyrie and reworks the rhythm of the
tenor voice to make it move at a slower speed, functioning
like a strict cantus firmus.
• In the Agnui Dei he takes things further. He moves the
inversion of the superius of the chanson to the bass line
and augments it by four.
DONEC QUIS NUNC
 JOSQUIN – MASSES
2. PARAPHRASE MASS

• The sound of a paraphrase mass resembles that of an

imitation mass, featuring a series of independent
phrases in imitative or homophonic textures without a
structural cantus firmus.
• The two types of mass differ not in style, but in their
source material, since the paraphrase mass elaborates
a monophonic chant instead of a polyphonic model.
 JOSQUIN – MASSES
2. PARAPHRASE MASS

Missa Pange lingua: Kyrie (1513-21)

• Based on the plainchant hymn Pange lingua gloriosi.
• Instead of using the hymn melody as a cantus firmus,
Josquin paraphrased it in all four voices, in whole or in
part, in each movement.
• Phrases from the hymn melody are adapted as motives
that are treated in points of imitation, or occasionally in
homophonic declamation.
PLAINCHANT HYMN PANGE LINGUA GLORIOSI
JOSQUIN, MISSA PANGE LINGUA: KYRIE
 STYLISTIC DEVELOPMENTS
(REVIEW)

• Musical style changed radically at the end of the 15th century.

• Instead of layering techniques and predetermined elements of
design, composers began to use motifs as basic units.
• In the 16th-century, this technique produced a series of points of
imitation, with chordal passages for variety.
• Although Du Fay’s generation tended not to emphasize the
differences among voices, parts did not become fully equal until the
end of the century, in Josquin and his generation.
• The result was the change from a hierarchical texture, in which
each voice has a special function, to a texture in which all the
voices are equal in importance and in melodic style.
 THE FROTTOLA
FEATURES

Italian genre of secular song.

Two important composers: Bartolomeo Tromboncino (ca. 1470-ca. 1535) and
Marchetto Cara (ca. 1470-1525), who both lived in Mantua.

Cara’s ‘Hor venduto ho la speranza‘ was published in a volume by Ottaviano

Petrucci in 1504, the first in a series of eleven volumes of frottole.

Main features:
• Texts in literary forms; or, freely structured
• Comic-satirical
• Dancelike rhythm, with syncopation and hemiola
• Chordal in texture
• Simple harmonic progressions
• Sung by voices, instruments, or any combination
 THE FROTTOLA
HOR VENDUTO HO LA SPERANZA
 THE MADRIGAL

• The most popular form of secular polyphony in the

second half of the 16th century.
• The most important genre of the late Renaissance.
• Led to stylistic developments that culminated in the
Baroque period, particularly those involving the
expressive relationship between text and music.
 THE MADRIGAL
NOT THE FROTTOLA

• Changes in literary taste in the early 16th century led

composers away from the half-serious texts, closed
forms, and soprano-dominated texture of the frottola.
• Poetry more profound, serious – setting of real poets.
• Through-composed, rather than strophic.
• More polyphonic, less instrumental-like in the
accompaniment.
• Expresses the content of the text (in the frottola, poetry
and music relate in the coordination of verse and
phrase lengths, rhymes and musical repeats, and verbal
accentuation and rhythms – but not expression).
 THE MADRIGAL
ORIGINS

• Madrigalian verse in the early 16th century owed its style,

imagery and even vocabulary to the lyrics of Petrarch,
whose poetry enjoyed an extraordinary revival.
• For young Italian poets, Petrarch’s canzoni and sonnets
were a major source of inspiration.
• Pietro Bembo (1470–1547) was the leading Petrarchist,
who championed the ‘classical’ Tuscan language of the
Trecento writers (Tuscany is the region around Florence).
• Desirable characteristics of Petrarch’s style included his
use of word accent and rhyme, and especially his ability to
create varied effects, in part through free alternation of
‘versi rotti’ (7-syllable lines) and ‘versi interi’ (11-syllable
lines).
THE MADRIGAL
ORIGINS
 THE ‘CLASSIC’ MADRIGAL
ARCADELT

• The Franco-Flemish composer Jacques Arcadelt (1507-68) was

based in Florence. He published five books for four voices and
one for three voices between 1539 and 1544.
• His four-voice Primo libro (1539) is the most famous single
book of madrigals ever published. It was reprinted over 40
times before the mid-17th century, and includes the celebrated
Il bianco e dolce cigno.
• Arcadelt chose Petrarchist verse, although few poems by
Petrarch himself.
• Variety of texture: his madrigals feature imitative counterpoint,
although opening phrases and important lines of text are often
set in declamatory chordal fashion.
• He tended to use repetition of the text and some overlapping of
phrases, but was still bound by the form of the chosen text.
THE ‘CLASSIC’ MADRIGAL
IL BIANCO E DOLCE CIGNO
 THE MID-CENTURY MADRIGAL
RORE

• Cipriano de Rore (1515/16-1565), a Netherlandish composer who

lived in Ferrara, was the leading madrigalist of his generation.
• His first books for five (1542) and four voices (1550) were among
the most often reprinted volumes of the century, and his works
were models for more than a generation of imitators.
• Although madrigals in the ‘classic’ style of Arcadelt were still being
written in the 1550s, the genre was changing rapidly, with a wider
choice of texts.
• Instead of setting individual stanzas composers were writing large
cyclic works in which every stanza was given separate treatment.
• Rore’s concentration on the meaning of the texts led him to run
lines together, to end a phrase in mid-line, even to disregard the
formal divisions of the poetry.
• The high technical finish and distinct individuality of each of his
pieces set a new course and a new standard for the madrigal.
THE MID-CENTURY MADRIGAL
RORE
 THE 1580S MADRIGAL
MARENZIO

• Luca Marenzio (1553/54-1599) was employed in Rome but

had important connections with Ferrara.
• Marenzio was one of the most prolific and wide-ranging
madrigalists of the later 16th century, particularly notable for
the detailed word-painting of his early works and the
advanced harmonic expressiveness of his later ones.
• Both were leaders in the development of the ‘ornamental
style’ of madrigal, inspired by a new style of singing whose
most distinctive characteristic was wide-ranging and
technically demanding ornamentation.
• This led to an emphasis on virtuosity, and to the practice of
written-out ornamentation.
• The style was cultivated in wealthy cities where the finest
singers were attached to courts, as in Rome and Ferrara.
 THE 1580S MADRIGAL
MARENZIO
Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi
Vo mesurando a passi tardi e lenti;
E gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti
Ove vestigio uman l’arena stampi.
Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi
Dal manifesto accorger de le genti;
Perchè negli atti d’allegrezza spenti
Di fuor si legge com’io dentro avampi.
Sì ch’io mi credo omai che monti et piagge
E fiumi e selve sappian di che tempre
Sia la mia vita, ch’è celata altrui.
Ma pur sì aspre vie nè sì selvagge
Cercar non so, ch’Amor non venga sempre
Ragionando con meco, et io co llui
Alone and thoughtful, through the most
desolate fields,
I go measuring out slow, hesitant paces,
and keep my eyes intent on fleeing
any place where human footsteps mark the
sand.
I find no other defence to protect me
from other people’s open notice,
since in my aspect, whose joy is quenched,
they see from outside how I flame within.
So now I believe that mountains and river-
banks
and rivers and forests know the quality
of my life, hidden from others.
Yet I find there is no path so wild or harsh
that love will not always come there
speaking with me, and I with him.
THE 1580S MADRIGAL
SOLO E PENSOSO
 THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL

• In the 1580s and 90s several composers of madrigals emerged

in England, inspired by the Italians. The embrace of foreign
models was a significant new development in English music.
• In English literature at this time was heavily influenced by Italian
sources, with the ‘new poets’ and Shakespeare writing many
sonnet sequences, for example, and setting plays in Italy.
• The English madrigal development was part of a wider italianate
fashion in music, letters, and manners that was sweeping
through late Elizabethan England.
• Musica transalpina (1588) was the most influential anthology of
translated madrigals.
• The English madrigal was similar to the early Italian madrigal in
style and manner of performance. Laters Italian developments
towards professional, virtuoso singing did not become part of the
English tradition.
 THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL
MORLEY

• Thomas Morley (1557-1602) was closely attuned to Italy, and

became the guiding force of the whole English madrigal
development, establishing the stylistic norm that was followed
by all later English madrigalists.
• A pupil of William Byrd, a well-connected Gentleman of the
Chapel Royal, the monopolist of music printing after 1596, and
the learned ‘Master’ of A Plaine and Easie Introduction to
Practicall Musicke (1597), Morley occupied a position of
considerable prestige and power, and published more
madrigals, canzonets and balletts than anyone else.
• Setting Petrarchistic or pastoral verse of trivial quality, Morley
followed the words carefully but not as closely as the Italians.
• Counterpoint is employed more simply than with the
contemporary Italians, in a clearly harmonic idiom.
THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL
NOW IS THE MONTH OF MAYING
 THE LUTE SONG
DOWLAND

• The accompanied song of the late 16th and early 17th centuries is
peculiar to England. This genre flourished in the period 1597–1622.
• The lute song is similar to the French air de cour, but, unlike its
counterpart the English madrigal, it was not dependent on continental
influences.
• In the lute song the vocal line – mostly solo but sometimes duet – is
dominant.
• In contrast to the madrigal, it is generally strophic and concise.
• The musical structure is often directly related to the poetic form while the
vocal line usually attempts to embody the mood and content of the poem.
• All lute-song composers mix elaborate ‘serious’ styles with simple
melodic and chordal types. In their choice of texts, moralizing and serious
subjects contrast with amorous and light ‘conceits’. Most of the poetry set
is anonymous, as with the English madrigal.
• John Dowland (1563-1626) was a leading composer of lute songs.
 THE LUTE SONG
DOWLAND

• The accompanied song of the late 16th and early 17th centuries is
peculiar to England. This genre flourished in the period 1597–1622.
• The lute song is similar to the French air de cour, but, unlike its
counterpart the English madrigal, it was not dependent on continental
influences.
• In the lute song the vocal line – mostly solo but sometimes duet – is
dominant.
• In contrast to the madrigal, it is generally strophic and concise.
• The musical structure is often directly related to the poetic form while the
vocal line usually attempts to embody the mood and content of the poem.
• All lute-song composers mix elaborate ‘serious’ styles with simple
melodic and chordal types. In their choice of texts, moralizing and serious
subjects contrast with amorous and light ‘conceits’. Most of the poetry set
is anonymous, as with the English madrigal.
• John Dowland (1563-1626) was a leading composer of lute songs.