All ancient civilizations entered historical times with a flourishing musical culture. That the earliest writers explained it in terms of legend and myth strongly suggests the remote beginnings of the art of sound. Among the speculations about its origin, the more plausible are that it began as a primitive form
of communication, that it grew out of a device to expedite communal
labour, or that it originated as a powerful adjunct to religious
ceremonies. While such theories must necessarily remain speculative, it
is clear, despite the prehistoric musical artifacts found in central Europe, that the cradle of Western music was the Fertile Crescent cupping the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. There the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Hebrew nations, among others, evolved political, social cultures
that were absorbed by the conquering Greeks and, in turn, by the
Romans, who introduced elements of that Mediterranean music to much of
western Europe.
In
all of these early cultures the social functions of music were
essentially the same, since their climate, geographic location, cultural
pace, and mutual influences produced many more social similarities than
differences. The primary function of music was apparently religious,
ranging from heightening the effect of “magic”
to ennobling liturgies. The other musical occasions depicted in both
pictures and written accounts were equally functional: stirring
incitements to military zeal, soothing accompaniments to communal or
solitary labour, heightening aids to dramatic spectacles, and enlivening
backgrounds to social gatherings that involved either singing or dancing or both. In every case musical sounds were an adjunct either to bodily movement (dance, march, game, or work) or to song. Many centuries were to pass before pleasure in euphonious sound became an end in itself.
The establishment of Western musical traditions
Roots in antiquity
Ancient Middle East and Egypt
The inhabitants of the Mesopotamian region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians—flourished from about 3500 to about 500 bce. Their pictures and the few surviving artifacts indicate that they had instruments of every basic type: idiophones, whose sound is made by resonating as a whole; aerophones, which resonate a column of blown air; chordophones, with strings to be plucked or struck; and membranophones, made of stretched skins over a resonating body. An undecipherable hymn engraved in stone, dating from about 800 bce, is evidence of a primitive system of musical notation.
The Egyptians,
entering historical times about 500 years later than the Mesopotamians,
enjoyed all of the same types of activities and instruments, as may be
deduced from numerous written references to music as well as seen on
many artifacts, especially the pictures preserved on pottery utensils.
The musical culture of the Hebrew peoples, recorded from about 2000 bce and documented primarily in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), was more directly influential in the West because of its adoption and adaptation into the Christian
liturgy. Because of the prohibition of Jewish religious law against the
making of “graven images,” there are very few surviving artifacts or
pictures. Among the established practices of the temple service still
current in the synagogue are the extensive use of the shofar (a ritualistic ram’s-horn trumpet) and the singing of passages from the Torah (Pentateuch; the first five books of the Bible), prayers, and songs of praise.
Ancient Greece
Of the eastern Mediterranean cultures, it was undoubtedly that of the
Greeks that furnished the most direct link with the musical development
of western Europe, by way of the Romans, who defeated them but adopted
much of Greek culture intact. Entering historical times relatively late,
circa 1000 bce, the Greeks soon
dominated their neighbours and absorbed many elements of earlier
cultures, which they modified and combined into an enlightened and sophisticated civilization. The two basic Greek religious cults—one devoted to Apollo, the other to Dionysus—became the prototypes for the two aesthetic poles, classical and romantic,
that have contended throughout Western cultural history. The
Apollonians were characterized by objectivity of expression, simplicity,
and clarity, and their favoured instrument was the kithara, a type of lyre. The Dionysians, on the other hand, preferred the reed-blown aulos and were identified by subjectivity, emotional abandon, and sensuality.
The prevailing doctrine of ethos, as explained by ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, was based on the belief that music has a direct effect upon the soul
and actions of humankind. As a result, the Greek political and social
systems were intertwined with music, which had a primary role in the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. And the Grecian educational system was focused upon musica and gymnastica, the former referring to all cultural and intellectual studies, as distinguished from those related to physical training.
To support its fundamental role in society, an intricate scientific rationale of music evolved, encompassing tuning, instruments, modes (melodic formulas based on certain scales), and rhythms. The 6th-century-bce philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras was the first to record the vibratory ratios that established the series of notes still used in Western music. From the total gamut of notes used were derived the various modes bearing the names of Grecian tribes—Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc. The rhythmic system, deriving from poetry, was based on long–short relationships rather than strong–weak accentual metre. After Pythagoras, Aristoxenus was the major historian and theoretician of Greek music.
Ancient Rome
When the musical culture of the eastern Mediterranean was
transplanted into the western Mediterranean by the returning Roman
legions, it was inevitably modified by local tastes and traditions. In
most cases, the resulting practices were more limited than their models.
The diatonic (seven-note) scale, for example, became the standard, displacing the chromatic and enharmonic structures of the Grecian system. Of particular consequence was the new concept of metre as a series of equal durations, with emphasis being determined by accent (stress) rather than by duration.
An inventory of the musical heritage transplanted from the ancient
East (particularly Greece) to Rome reveals the rich treasure inherited:
an acoustical theory that accounted for the identification and
classification of tones;
a concept of tonal organization resulting in the system of modes;
principles of rhythmic organization; basic principles of instrument
construction; a system of notation that conveyed all necessary indications of pitch and duration; and a large repertory of melodies to serve as models for further composition.
The Middle Ages
Monophonic liturgical chant
With the decline of the Roman Empire, the institution destined to perpetuate and expand the musical heritage of antiquity was the Christian church, but it was not a unified process. Many of the cultural centres of the Western church developed distinctive characteristics while sharing the common heritage of the Hebrew liturgy and Greek culture. In Milan, for example, metrical hymnody, as distinguished from the earlier practice of unmetred psalmody, was cultivated, particularly under the influence of the 4th-century bishop Ambrose, who first attempted to codify the growing repertory of chants. This body of Milanese church music, therefore, came to be called Ambrosian chant. Somewhat later a unique style and repertory known as Mozarabic chant evolved in Spain, and in France the Gallican style prevailed.But the mainstream of church music was the type of chant practiced in Rome. Beginning in the late 6th century, according to tradition, with Pope Gregory I, the vast number of traditional melodies that became the foundation for the later development of Western art music were codified and organized. A systematic organization of tonal materials also was gradually accomplished, resulting in the eight church modes. Each melody was assigned a specific function in the services of the liturgical year—some for the mass and some for the divine offices such as matins, vespers, and compline. After a period of assimilation, the Gregorian chant repertory began a process of expansion in the 9th century, when the practice of troping originated. A trope is either a text or a melodic section added to a preexisting melody or a combination of text and music incorporated into existing liturgical music. It is not surprising that church musicians, after years of singing traditional chants, should want to express themselves by adding words to vocalized melodies. Perhaps the motive was more functional: the added syllables would make the long textless passages easier to remember. Tuotilo (died 915), a monk of Sankt Gallen (in what is now Switzerland), is credited with the invention of tropes. Notker Balbulus (died 912) is notable for his association with the sequence, a long hymn that originated as a trope added to the final syllable of the Alleluia of the mass.
Development of polyphony
At the same time that the Gregorian repertory was being expanded by
the interpolation of tropes and sequences, it was being further enriched
by a revolutionary concept destined to give a new direction to the art
of sound for hundreds of years. This concept was polyphony, the simultaneous sounding of two or more melodic lines. The practice emerged gradually during the early Middle Ages,
and the lack of definite knowledge regarding its origin has brought
forward several plausible theories: it resulted from singers with
different natural vocal ranges singing at their most-comfortable pitch
levels; it was a practice of organists adopted by singers;
or it came about when the repetition of a melody at a different pitch
level was sung simultaneously with the original statement of the melody.
Whatever motivated this dramatic departure from traditional monophony (music consisting of a single voice part), it was an established practice when it was described in Musica enchiriadis (c. 900), a manual for singers and one of the major musical documents of the Middle Ages. To a given plainsong (or vox principalis), a second voice (vox organalis) could be added at the interval (distance between notes) of a fourth or fifth (four or five steps) below. Music so performed was known as organum. While it may be assumed that the first attempts at polyphony involved only parallel motion at a set interval, the Musica enchiriadis
describes and gives examples of two-part singing in similar (but not
exactly parallel) and contrary movement—evidence that a considerable
process of evolution had already taken place.
The next major source of information was the Micrologus, written in the early 11th century by the Italian monk and musical theorist Guido d’Arezzo.
That work documented principles that were crucial to the further
development of polyphony. Rhythmic independence was added to melodic
independence, and the added voice might sing two or more tones to one in
the original plainsong. During the half century after Guido’s death,
developments came more rapidly as the plainsong chant became the lower
rather than the upper voice. After the emancipation of the organal part,
vox organalis, its ultimate freedom was reached in the organums of the monastery of Saint-Martial in Limoges, France, where the plainsong part was reduced to the role of sustaining each tone
while the organal part indulged in free melismata (groups of notes sung
to a single syllable), either improvised or composed. This new style
was called organum purum.
The Notre-Dame school
Early in the 12th century the centre of musical activity shifted to the church of Notre-Dame in Paris, where the French composer Léonin recorded in the Magnus Liber Organi (“Great Book of Organum”) a collection of two-part organums for the entire church year. A generation later his successor, Pérotin, edited and revised the Magnus Liber, incorporating the rhythmic patterns already well known in secular music and adding more than one part to the cantus firmus (the “given” or preexisting plainsong melody). When metre was applied to the original plainsong as well as to the vox organalis, the resulting form was called a clausula. Then, when words were provided for the added part or parts, a clausula became a motet. At first the words given to the motet were a commentary in Latin on the text of the original plainsong tenor (the voice part “holding” the cantus firmus; from Latin tenere, “to hold”). Later in the 13th century the added words were in French and secular in nature. Finally, each added part was given its own text, resulting in the classic Paris motet: a three-part composition consisting of a portion of plainchant (tenor) overlaid with two faster moving parts, each with its own secular text in French. At the same time another polyphonic form, the conductus, was flourishing. It differed from a motet in that its basic part was not plainsong and that all parts sang the same Latin text in note-against-note style. The conductus gradually disappeared with the rise of the motet, which apparently served both liturgical and secular functions.Ars Nova
When the influential treatise Ars Nova (“New Art”) by the composer Philippe de Vitry appeared early in the 14th century, the preceding epoch acquired its designation of Ars Antiqua (“Old Art”), for it was only in retrospect that the rapid developments of the century and a half from circa 1150 to circa 1300 could appear as antiquated. De Vitry recorded the innovations of his day, particularly in the areas of metre and harmony. While 13th-century music had been organized around the triple “modal” rhythms derived from secular music and a harmonic vocabulary based on “perfect” consonances (unison, fourth, fifth, octave), the New Art of the 14th century used duple as well as triple divisions of the basic pulse and brought about a taste for harmonious intervals of thirds and sixths.The musical centre of 14th-century Italy was Florence, where a blind organist, Francisco Landini, and his predecessors and contemporaries Giovanni da Cascia, Jacopo da Bologna, and Lorenzo and Ghirardello da Firenze were the leading composers of several new forms: madrigals (contrapuntal compositions for several voices), ballatas (similar to the French virelai), and caccias (three-voice songs using melodic imitation).
Monophonic secular song
Secular music undoubtedly flourished during the early Middle Ages, but, aside from sporadic references, the earliest accounts of such music in the Western world described the music of the goliards—itinerant minor clerics and students who, from the 7th century on, roamed the land singing and playing topical songs dealing with love, war, famine, and other issues of the day. The emergence in France of a fully developed secular musical tradition about the beginning of the 12th century is evidence that the art had been evolving continuously before that time. Partially motivated by the attitude of chivalry engendered by the Crusades, a new lifestyle began among the nobility of southern France. Calling themselves troubadours, they circulated among the leading courts of the region, devoting themselves to writing and singing poetry in the vernacular. The troubadour movement flourished in Provence during the 12th and 13th centuries. About the middle of the 12th century, noblemen of northern France, most notably Adam de La Halle, took up the pastime, calling themselves trouvères. In Germany a similar group known as minnesingers, represented by Walther von der Vogelweide, began their activities about 1150 and continued for almost a century after their French counterparts had ceased composing. Late in the 13th century the burgher class in Germany began imitating the aristocratic minnesingers. Calling themselves Meistersingers, they flourished for more than 500 years, organizing themselves into fraternities and following strict rules of poetry, music, and performance. The most famous of them, Hans Sachs, was immortalized in the 19th century in Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Relatively little is known of similar secular musical activities in Italy, Spain, and England. Closely associated with the entertainments of the aristocratic dilettantes were the professional musicians of the peasant class called jongleurs and minstrels in France, Gaukler in Germany, and scops and gleemen in England.The musical style that had been established by the troubadours—which was monophonic, of limited range, and sectional in structure—was adopted by each of the succeeding groups. Of particular significance in view of its influence on polyphonic music was the metric system, which is based on six rhythmic modes. Supposedly derived from Greek poetic metres such as trochaic (long–short) and iambic (short–long), these modes brought about a prevailing triple metre in French music, while German poetry produced duple as well as triple metre. A great variety of formal patterns evolved, in which musical structure and poetic structure were closely related. The most characteristic was the ballade, which was called Bar form in Germany, with an AAB structure. This type, along with the rondeau (song for solo voice with choral refrain) and the similar virelai (an analogue of the Italian ballata), was destined to become a favoured form employed by composers of polyphony such as Guillaume de Machaut, the universally acknowledged master of French music of the Ars Nova period. Machaut also continued the composition of motets, organizing them around recurrent rhythmic patterns (isorhythm), a major structural technique of the age. The beginnings of an independent instrumental repertory during the 13th century are represented by the estampie, a monophonic dance form almost identical in style to the vocal secular music.
The Renaissance period
The term Renaissance, in spite of its various connotations, is difficult to apply to music. Borrowed from the visual arts
and literature, the term is meaningful primarily as a chronological
designation. Some historians date the beginning of the musical
Renaissance to about 1400, some to the rise of imitative counterpoint
about 1450. Others relate it to the musical association with humanistic
poetry at the beginning of the 16th century, and still others reserve
the term for the conscious attempt to recreate and imitate supposedly
classical models that took place about 1600.
The court of Burgundy
No one line of demarcation is completely satisfactory, but, adhering
to commonly accepted usage, one may conveniently accept as the beginning
of the musical Renaissance the flourishing and secularization of music
at the beginning of the 15th century, particularly at the court of Burgundy. Certainly, many manifestations
of a cultural renaissance were evident at the time: interest in
preserving artifacts and literature of classical antiquity, the waning
authority and influence of the church, the waxing humanism, the burgeoning of urban centres and universities, and the growing economic affluence of the states of western Europe.
As one manifestation of their cultivation of elegant living, the aristocracy of both church and state
vied with one another in maintaining resident musicians who could serve
both chapel and banqueting hall. The frequent interchange of these
musicians accounts for the rapid dissemination of new musical techniques
and tastes. Partly because of economic advantages, Burgundy and its
capital, Dijon,
became the centre of European activity in music as well as the
intellectual and artistic focus of northern Europe during the first half
of the 15th century. Comprising most of eastern France and the Low Countries, the courts of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold attracted the leading musicians of western Europe. Prime among them was Guillaume Dufay, who had spent some time in Rome and Florence before settling in Cambrai about 1440. An important contemporary of Dufay was Gilles Binchois,
who served at Dijon from about 1430 until 1460. The alliance of
Burgundy with England accounted for the presence on the Continent of the
English composer John Dunstable,
who had a profound influence on Dufay. While the contributions of the
English to the mainstream of Continental music are sparsely documented,
the differences in style between Dufay and his predecessor Machaut
are partially accounted for by the new techniques and, especially, the
richer harmonies adopted by the Burgundian composers from their English
allies.
New religious musical forms
The social circumstances of the age determined that composers would devote their efforts to the mass, the motet, and the chanson (secular French song). During the first half of the 15th century, the mass became established as a unified polyphonic setting of the five main parts of the Ordinary of the mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), with each movement based on either the relevant portion of plainsong or, reflecting the dawning Renaissance, a secular song such as the popular “L’Homme armé” (“The Armed Man”) and “Se la face ay pale” (“If my face seems pale”). Still reflecting medieval practices, the preexisting melody (cantus firmus) was usually in the tenor (lowest) part and in long, sustained tones, while the upper parts provided free elaboration. Dufay’s nine complete settings of the mass, compared with Machaut’s single setting, give a clear indication of the growing importance of the mass as a musical form. The motet became simply a setting of a Latin text from Scriptures or the liturgy in the prevailing polyphonic style of the time. It was no longer necessarily anchored to a plainsong tenor; the composer could give free reign to his invention, although some did, of course, resort to older techniques.Secular music
It was in secular music that giant strides took place. While their chansons continued the tradition of rondeaux, virelais, and ballades, Dufay and his contemporaries added free forms divorced from the ordered patterns of the Ars Antiqua and Ars Nova periods.Among the distinctive features of Burgundian musical style was the prevailing three-part texture, with melodic and rhythmic interest centred in the top part. Because it was so typical of secular songs, this texture is commonly referred to as “ballade style” whether it appears in mass, motet, or chanson. Its possible stylistic implication is that a solo voice sang the upper melody, accompanied by instruments playing the lower parts, although no documents remain to establish exactly how the music was performed. There was probably no standard performing medium: all parts may have been sung; some or all may have been doubled by instruments; or there may have been one vocal part supported by instrumental accompaniment.
The Franco-Flemish school
A watershed in the history of music occurred about the middle of the 15th century. The fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453 and the end of the Hundred Years’ War at about the same time increased commerce from the East and affluence in the West. Most significant musically was the pervasive influence of musicians from the Low Countries, whose domination of the musical scene during the last half of the 15th century is reflected in the period designations the Netherlands school and the Franco-Flemish school. These musicians traveled and resided throughout Europe in response to their great demand at princely courts, including those of the Medici family in Florence and the Sforzas in Milan. Further dissemination of knowledge resulted from the invention and development of printing.The leading composers, whose patrons were now members of the civil aristocracy as well as princes of the church, were Jean de Ockeghem, Jakob Obrecht, and, especially, Josquin des Prez. Ockeghem, born and trained in Flanders, spent most of his life in the service of the kings of France and was recognized by his contemporaries as the “Prince of Music.” Obrecht remained near his birthplace in the Netherlands, going occasionally to Italy in the retinue of Duke Ercole I of Ferrara. More typical of the peripatetic Netherlanders was the career of Josquin, the most-influential composer of the period. After training at Saint-Quentin, he served the Sforza family in Milan, the papal choir in Rome, Ercole I, and King Louis XII of France before returning to his native Flanders in 1516. These three composers and several contemporaries hastened the development of the musical techniques that became the basis of 16th-century practice and influenced succeeding developments.
Rather than the three parts typical of most Burgundian music, four parts became standard for vocal polyphony in the late 15th century. The fourth part was added below the tenor, increasing the total range and resulting in greater breadth of sound. The presence of the four parts also allowed for contrasts of texture such as the “duet style” so characteristic of Josquin, when the two upper parts might sing a passage alone and be echoed by the two lower parts alone. The emergence of the technique of imitation (one voice repeating recognizably a figure heard first in another voice) as the chief form-generating principle brought about more equality of parts. At the same time, “familiar style,” in which all parts move together in chords, provided a means of textural contrast. The great variety of rhythmic techniques that evolved during the 14th and early 15th centuries made possible a wide range of expression—from quiet tranquillity for sacred music to lively and spirited secular music. Knowledge of the musical practices comes not only from the thousands of surviving compositions but from informative treatises such as the 12 by the composer Johannes Tinctoris (1436–1511), one of which, Terminorum musicae diffinitorium (c. 1475), is the earliest printed dictionary of musical terms.
The chief forms of vocal music continued to be the mass, the motet, and the chanson, to which must be added other national types that developed during the 15th century—the villancico (secular poetry set for voice and lute or for three or four voices) in Spain and the frottola (a simple, chordal setting in three or four parts of an Italian text) in Italy. The emergence of the frottola in northern Italy led to the development of the Renaissance madrigal, which impelled that country to musical supremacy in Europe.
Instrumental music
At the same time, an independent instrumental idiom
was evolving. While instruments had been in common usage throughout the
Middle Ages, their function was primarily to double or to substitute
for voices in vocal polyphonic music or to provide music for dancing.
Techniques unsuitable for voices were doubtless part of an
instrumentalist’s musical vocabulary, but most such music was improvised
rather than being written. Although there are a few sources of
instrumental music dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, the earliest
relatively extensive documentation comes from the 15th century,
particularly from German sources, such as the Buxheimer Orgelbuch and Conrad Paumann’s Fundamentum organisandi (Fundamentals of Organ Playing). The compositions in both collections are of two basic types, arrangements of vocal works and keyboard pieces entitled Praeambulum (Prelude).
During the course of the 16th century, instrumental music burgeoned
rapidly, along with the continually developing idiomatically
instrumental techniques, such as strongly accented rhythms, rapid
repeated tones and figures, angular melodic lines involving wide
intervallic skips, wide ranges, long, sustained tones and phrases, and
much melodic ornamentation.
Musical forms
Dance forms, a continuation of a tradition unbroken since the beginnings of recorded music history, were most characteristically composed in pairs, although single dances as well as embryonic suites of three or more dances appeared. The pairs usually consisted of pieces in contrasting tempo and metre that often were unified by sharing a common melody. Common dance pairs included the pavane and galliard, the allemande and courante, and the basse danse and tourdion.Preludes continued as a major form of organ music and were joined by the fantasia, the intonazione, and the toccata in a category frequently referred to as “free forms” because of the inconsistency and unpredictability of their structure and musical content—sections in imitative counterpoint, sections of sustained chords, sections in virtuoso figuration. If a distinction must be made, it might be said in very general terms that the fantasia tended to be more contrapuntal while the toccata (“touch piece”) featured passages designed to demonstrate the performer’s agility, although the designations were freely interchangeable. To the same category belong the descriptive pieces such as The King’s Hunt, which featured naive musical representations of natural sounds.
The ricercare and the canzona, generally referred to as fugal forms because of their relationship to the principle of the fugue (that of melodic imitation), arose out of the growing understanding of and dependence on imitation as a unifying structural technique. Although these designations were applied to a great variety of pieces—some identical in style to the fantasia or prelude—the classic ricercare of the 16th century was virtually an instrumental motet, slow and churchlike in character and consisting of a number of sections, each utilizing imitation. The canzona followed the same structural principle but was a lively counterpart to the chanson, with the sections sometimes in contrasting tempo and metre. Cantus firmus compositions were based upon preexisting melody. During the 16th century most were designed for liturgical usage but were based upon both secular melodies and plainsong. In most cases the cantus firmus was sounded in long, sustained tones while the other part or parts added decorative contrapuntal lines. The organ mass, in which the choir and the organ alternated lines of the liturgical text, was a popular practice.
Variations also often used a preexisting melody but differed from cantus firmus compositions in that the melody was much shorter and was repeated a number of times, each time with different accompanying parts. The two basic types during the Renaissance were the plain, or melodic, variations and the ground. In the former, the chosen melody usually appeared in the top part and was varied in each repetition with ornamentation and melodic figuration or with changing accompaniments. The ground, or ground bass, was a simple melodic pattern sounded in the lowest part, which served as a foundation for imaginative figuration in the upper parts.
Solo and ensemble instruments
The four major vehicles for instrumental music of the period were the lute, the organ, stringed keyboard instruments, and instrumental ensembles.
Most popular by far was the lute, which could produce the major
elements of instrumental style except for long, sustained tones.
Noteworthy composers of lute music included Luis Milán in Spain, Arnold Schlick in Germany, and John Dowland
in England. The organ, because of its close association with liturgical
music, continued to be an important instrument, and its literature
includes all of the formal types except dances. Among the leading organ
composers were the Germans Paumann, Schlick, and Paul Hofhaimer, the
Italians Claudio Merulo and Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, the Spaniard Antonio de Cabezón, and the Englishman John Bull.
The two basic classes of stringed keyboard instruments were the harpsichord (virginal, spinet, clavecin, clavicembalo), with quill-plucked strings, and the clavichord,
with strings struck by thin metal tongues. Keyboard instruments were
highly capable of idiomatically instrumental effects and flourished,
particularly in England, from the last half of the 16th century onward,
thanks to the composers William Byrd, Bull, and Orlando Gibbons. A major manuscript source of the keyboard works of these masters is the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book of the 17th century.
Instrumental ensembles of the Renaissance were not standardized, although consorts (groups) of viols, of woodwind instruments such as recorders and shawms (loud oboes), or of brass instruments such as the cornet and sackbut (early trombone)
were common. More common, however, were mixed consorts of various types
of instruments, depending on the players available. All types of
instrumental forms were performed by ensembles except for the prelude and the toccata, which were essentially keyboard works. Representative composers included the Gabrielis and Gibbons.
Vocal music in the 16th century
At the beginning of the 16th century the style of vocal music was
generally uniform because of the pervading influence of Netherlanders
during the preceding half century. That uniformity persisted well into
the late Renaissance but was gradually superseded by emerging national
differences, new forms, and the increasing importance of Italy as a
musical centre during the last half of the 16th century.
The rapid accumulation of new musical techniques and resources
produced a wide vocabulary of artistic expression, and the invention of
music printing helped the rapid dispersal of new techniques. In an age
in which music was an essential social grace, composers wrote more
secular music, in which fewer technical restrictions were in force and
experimentation and novelty were applauded. Advances were particularly
apparent in venturesome harmonies as chromaticism (the use of notes not belonging to the mode of the composition) sounded the death knell of the modal system.
Liturgical practice dictated that the mass and the motet remain the chief forms of sacred vocal music. Compared with secular music, their style was conservative, but inevitably some of the newer secular techniques crept in and figured effectively in the music of the Counter-Reformation within the Roman Catholic Church.
Four distinct types of mass settings were established during the century. Two types were continuations of earlier practice: the tenor mass, in which the same cantus firmus served for all five portions of the Ordinary of the mass, and the plainsong
mass, in which the cantus firmus (usually a corresponding section of
plainsong) differed for each portion. Reflecting the more liberal
attitudes of the Renaissance were the free mass, with no borrowed materials, and the parody
mass, in which the entire polyphonic web was freely adapted from a
motet or a secular composition. In all cases when a cantus firmus was
used, the preexistent melody might appear in its original form or in
paraphrased version, with tones added, omitted, or altered. As a result
of the upheaval in the church caused by the Reformation, new forms derived from established models appeared in Protestant worship: the German Lutheran chorale (hymn tune, arranged from plainsong or a secular melody), the chorale motet, English anthems (Anglican form of motet) and services, and the psalm tunes in Calvinist areas.
Italy
While not young in a chronological sense, the musical life of Italy was reborn at the beginning of the 16th century after a century of relative dormancy. The frottola remained the prevailing secular form in northern Italy for the first three decades of the century.When the humanistic poets, seeking a more-refined expression, and the Netherlanders and composers trained by them, applying a more-sophisticated musical technique, turned their efforts to the frottola, the result was the madrigal. The name was borrowed from the 14th-century form, but there was no resemblance in poetic or musical structure. Compared with the frottola, the earliest Renaissance madrigals, dating from about 1530, were characterized by quiet and restrained expression. Usually written for three or four voices, they were mostly homophonic (melody supported by chords) with occasional bits of imitation. Among the early madrigal composers were several Flemish composers resident in Italy, among them Adriaan Willaert, Jacques Arcadelt, and Philippe Verdelot. About 1560 the normal number of parts increased to five or six, and the texture became more consistently polyphonic. At the same time, more attention was given to expressive settings of the text, notably in the madrigals of Cipriano de Rore, Philippe de Monte, and the Gabrielis. During the last two decades of the century and continuing until the middle of the 17th century, the musical style of the madrigal changed appreciably. The late madrigals were of a very dramatic nature, featuring colouristic effects, vivid word-painting, and extensive chromaticism. Their declamatory character dictated a return to a more homophonic style. Noteworthy among the many composers of the late madrigal were Luca Marenzio, Carlo Gesualdo, and Claudio Monteverdi.
During the course of the century, simpler secular forms, such as the villanella, the canzonetta, and the balletto, appeared in Italy, largely as a reaction against the refinement, complication, and sophistication of the madrigal. They reverted to the chordal style of the frottola, often with intentionally parodistic lyrics. The balletto was particularly distinguished by a refrain of nonsense syllables such as “fa la la.”
England
Most of the Italian forms, along with their designations, were adopted by Elizabethan England during the last half of the 16th century. Most leading English composers, from William Byrd and Thomas Morley to John Wilbye, Thomas Weelkes, and Orlando Gibbons, contributed to the vast treasury of English secular music. Morley is particularly important as the editor of the most-significant collection of English madrigals, the Triumphes of Oriana, published in 1603 and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I (Oriana). These pieces correspond in style roughly to the middle-period Italian madrigal. English counterparts of the canzonetta and balletto were the canzonet and ballett. A late 16th-century innovation in both Italy and England was the ayre (air), a simple chordal setting especially suitable for a solo voice with a lute or a consort of instruments playing the other parts. John Dowland and Thomas Campion were notable composers of ayres.France
The French counterpart of Italian and English madrigals was the polyphonic chanson, a continuation of the chief medieval and early Renaissance form of secular music. Revitalized by composers such as Josquin, Clément Janequin, and Claudin de Sermisy, the chanson developed several distinctive features: a clearly delineated sectional structure with some repetition of sections, much vivid programmatic writing, and occasional use of irregular metric organization. The irregular metric structure, called musique mesurée, was used for maintaining faithfully the accentuation of the poetry and reflects the traditional primacy of textual over musical considerations in French music.Germany
The lied,
or song, continued its 15th-century role as the chief secular form in
Germanic areas, but it did not develop to the same extent as the
madrigal and the chanson. Throughout the Renaissance it was relatively
conservative in its adherence to the cantus firmus principle and its tendency toward chordal over contrapuntal texture. Following Heinrich Isaac in the 15th century, the major 16th-century lieder composers were Ludwig Senfl, Hans Leo Hassler, and Johann Hermann Schein. To all national schools of the 16th century must be added the name of the Flemish composer Orlando di Lasso, who wrote in French, Italian, or German, depending on his current employment. The Spanish villancico was a flourishing popular form, but there was no Iberian equivalent to the madrigal, the chanson, or the lied.
(Source: britannica.com)
