Renaissance Period Flashcards
Ockeghem (c. 1410-1497)
Franco‐Flemish composer.
Sometime around 1452 was at the French court, where he stayed for the rest of his life, serving three successive kings. Travelled on court missions to Italy and Spain.
Leading composer of period between Du Fay and Josquin, but only 14 Masses, fewer than a dozen motets, and about 20 chansons survive, enough though to show his stature.
Style noted for contrapuntal richness. His Missa ‘Fors seulement’ was one of the first parody Masses, based on one of his own chansons. His Missa pro Defunctis is earliest surviving polyphonic requiem, Du Fay’s having been lost. His chansons were the ‘popular songs’ of his day
Busnois (c. 1430-1492)
French composer.
May have been pupil or colleague of Ockeghem.
Was long in the service of Charles the Bold (who became Duke of Burgundy in 1467). After Charles’s death in 1477, he served his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, until her death in 1482.
He became an official member of the chapel staff in 1470. This position involved extensive travel in northern France and the Low Countries, both in peacetime and during military campaigns. Regarded as one of the leading composers of his day, ranking next to Ockeghem, with whom he shared a penchant for elaborate melody, the use of canon, and lively rhythms.
His Missa L’homme armé is one of earliest based on this secular tune, but some of his most original work is to be found in his chansons, of which over 60 survive. For some of these he wrote the words.
His motet Anthoni usque limina has a part for a tenor who sings the note D in imitation of a bell. Its text has a reference to his name in the line ‘… in omnibus noys’.
Busnois is famous above all for his many polyphonic chansons, some of their poetic texts are almost certainly his own work.
Imitation Mass (or Parody Mass)
A musical setting of the five movements of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass that is unified by the presence of the entire texture of a pre-existing polyphonic work, represented by borrowed motifs and points of imitation. The relationship is usually clearest at the beginning, middle and end of each movement.
• The designation ‘imitation mass’, more in keeping with the terminology used in the 16th century to describe this type of composition, has been adopted by some scholars.
Paraphrase
A compositional technique, popular particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, whereby a pre-existing melody (usually chant) is used in a polyphonic work; it may be subjected to rhythmic and melodic ornamentation but is not obscured.
• Examples can be found in settings of the Mass Ordinary from the 14th and 15th centuries. In early 15th-century settings of hymns, antiphons and sequences based on chant, the borrowed melody usually appears in the upper voice and was not subject to much alteration. In cyclic masses, however, borrowed melodies (mainly restricted to the tenor) could be extensively paraphrased (e.g. Du Fay’s Missa ‘Ave regina celorum’).
• In masses of the late 15th century and the 16th, paraphrased melodies appear within an imitative texture, moving from voice to voice (as in Josquin’s Missa ‘Pange lingua’ or Palestrina’s masses based on hymns). It has been suggested that 15th- and 16th-century composers consciously included in their works short citations or paraphrases of sections of well-known chants or even of works by other composers for interpretative or symbolic purposes.
Obrecht (c. 1451-1505)
Franco-Flemish composer.
Worked throughout Europe, including Italy (Cambrai, Ferrara) and Bruges.
Obrecht’s career, unlike that of his contemporary Josquin des Prez, was focused on the Low Countries, and that may partly account for the fundamental differences between the two men, who are generally regarded as the towering figures of their age.
Was a church-based musician, a prolific composer above all of masses, and had fewer opportunities to encounter or be influenced by Italian humanism than Josquin, whose work was also more readily accessible through printing.
In the 1480s and 1490s, he was Europe’s leading composer of cyclic masses, of which he wrote nearly three dozen. In addition he left a sizeable oeuvre of motets and songs, many of which continued to circulate widely, along with his most famous masses, during the first half of the 16th century.
In the last years of his life, Obrecht was frequently mentioned in the same breath as Josquin, who outlived him by 16 years and has come to be seen as the more significant representative of his generation.
Used secular cantus firmus in his masses, e.g. Missa super Maria Zart.
He also used number symbolism in his works (cabalistic significance having been discovered in many of his structures, e.g. the number of tactus in his Missa ‘Sub tuum praesidium’ is 888, the symbol of Christ).
Josquin (c. 1450-1521)
French composer.
He was one of the greatest composers of the Renaissance, whose reputation stands on a level with those of Du Fay, Ockeghem, Palestrina, Lassus, and Byrd.
His music spans the transition between the late Middle Ages and that of the High Renaissance and served as a model for much of the 16th century.
His biography, which has never been easy to pin down, was substantially revised during the 1990s through the discovery that it conflated the lives of two different musicians. As a result of this disentanglement, it is now clear that Josquin des Prez was born at a later date, and resident in Italy for far fewer years, than had previously been thought.
He was possibly a pupil of Ockeghem.
Often regarded as the most gifted and influential composer of his time. He was not a radical innovator, but successfully developed existing and unexplored techniques.
He was particularly successful in giving dramatic emphasis to the texts he set by means of word‐rhythms and imitation.
Although his early masses used a cantus firmus, later ones employed parody techniques and were sometimes based on a motto theme or a series of canons. Similarly, in motets, he abandoned a plainchant cantus firmus in favor of imitative devices.
Some of his chansons were on erotic and frivolous texts and he was one of the first to appropriate tunes from court and theatre for his serious works. His work was so popular that many forgeries were published.
He wrote 18 masses (the best‐known being Ave Maris Stella, L’homme armé, and Pange lingua), nearly 100 motets, and over 70 secular works.
The collected edition of Josquin’s music gives the impression of a prolific composer. Opinions vary, however, about the authenticity of many of the works attributed to him in 16th-century sources; doubts have even been cast over pieces that were once thought to be firmly his, such as the motet Absalon fili mi, which has now been tentatively reassigned to Pierre de la Rue. The problem arises from the fact that Josquin’s music won international recognition during his lifetime, and was widely imitated.
Motets (general discussion of the motet from the medieval period to the 20th century in the medieval section of terms)
During this time, with the abandonment of strict isorhythm in motet writing, a shift in the primary function of the motet occurred.
In the first half of the 15th century, composers had already begun to return to the liturgical and devotional contexts in which the genre had originated, thus diminishing the relative significance of its role as a festal piece or a vehicle for social comment (occasional function).
Three functions for motets:
• Liturgical
• Devotional
• Occasional
Tinctoris (c. 1434-1511)
Franco-Flemish theorist and composer.
His early career was spent at Orléans, Chartres, and perhaps also at Cambrai, as a singer under Dufay.
Only a small quantity of Tinctoris’ music has survived, including five settings of the Mass.
His theoretical writings are numerous; they include a dictionary of musical terms (Terminorum musicae diffinitorium, c.1473) —the first ever to appear in print (Treviso, 1495)—and at least 11 other treatises variously concerned with notation, contrapuntal technique, and philosophical matters. Popular and influential in Tinctoris’ own time, these books are important today for the information they provide about the craft of composition and methods of music education in the late 15th century.
Music Printing/Petrucci
Italian music printer and publisher.
He was the first to use movable type for printing polyphonic music, beginning in 1501 in Venice with his Harmonice musices odhecaton A, which consists mainly of chansons by Franco-Flemish composers.
Over the next eight years he published polyphonic music by the leading Franco-Flemish and Italian composers of his day. By 1511, he had returned to Fossombrone; he continued printing there until about 1520, after which he opened a paper mill and ceased printing activity. He returned to Venice in 1536.
In France, Attaingnant followed Petrucci’s lead.
Chorale
The strophic congregational hymn of the Protestant Church in Germany.
• The German term originally signified a plainchant melody sung chorally, but from the late 16th century its meaning was widened to include vernacular hymns.
o The term most commonly used for such hymns in early Reformation times was geistliche (or christliche) Lieder (‘spritual songs’). Strictly speaking, the word ‘chorale’ means both the text and the melody of a hymn, considered as a unit, but not infrequently the term is used to describe the music alone—either a single-line melody or a fully harmonized version as in the four-part settings of Bach.
• From the outset of the Reformation the chorale proved to be one of the most powerful means of disseminating the ideals of the new Confession, crystallizing its message in simple language and providing an opportunity for congregations to take a central role in liturgical worship.
• Martin Luther was much involved in the creation of the new hymns, writing some 36 himself and encouraging others to follow his example. The texts and melodies of most of the earliest chorales, however, were adaptations of various older sources, particularly Gregorian hymns, antiphons, and sequences, and medieval German religious songs—the latter frequently requiring radical ‘purification’ from a doctrinal point of view.
• In addition to translating and adapting Latin hymns Luther produced some magnificent psalm paraphrases, such as ‘Aus tiefer Not’ (Psalm 130), and a number of hymns based on the medieval Leise (e.g. ‘Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist’). He also wrote several liturgical hymns designed as substitutes for parts of the Latin Ordinary of the Mass, such as ‘Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott’ to replace (or, at times in the liturgy, to supplement) the Credo.
Contrafactum
A vocal piece in which the original text is replaced by a new one.
• In Latin plainchant, texts for new feasts were frequently adapted to the melodies of existing chants.
• Contrafacta make up a significant portion of the surviving repertories of 12th- and 13th-century Western monophonic secular song (i.e. of the troubadours, trouvères, and Minnesinger), enabling a limited group of melodies to be applied to a much larger body of texts with the same rhyme scheme.
• The motet and other genres of medieval polyphony also include many adaptations of sacred compositions to secular texts and vice versa.
• After the mid-15th century, contrafacta tended to replace a secular text with a sacred one.
• In the Reformation the texts of many Lutheran chorales and Calvinist metrical psalms were fitted to existing melodies. The Protestant reformers, eager to provide appropriate music for their devotions, drew on both popular and courtly secular music as well as older sacred music, altering texts as needed.
Chorale motets
A polyphonic vocal composition in two or more parts based on a German chorale.
• During the 16th century, the chorale motet was the leading form of chorale composition; although it could be performed a cappella, instruments (like the organ) were frequently used either to reinforce or to replace one or more vocal parts.
• At first, the chorale melody was usually treated as a rather clearly differentiated cantus firmus, but towards the end of the 16th century and into the early 17th, each line of the chorale was normally presented in fugal imitation.
• After its eclipse by the chorale concerto and the chorale cantata in the 17th and 18th centuries, the a cappella chorale motet experienced a significant revival in the late 19th century and in the 20th.
Cantional style
The word ‘Cantional’ never gained general acceptance as a formal definition in German, although it has been used occasionally to indicate a collection of sacred songs (cantiones) or chorales for ecclesiastical use.
• The word ‘kancionál’ (pl. kancionály) arose in Czech in the early 16th century as a name for a book of sacred songs. In the course of time it replaced the older Czech term ‘písně’ (‘songs’), which was too broad.
• For those of non-Catholic denominations, the kancionál was a liturgical book; for Catholics who used Latin and plainsong during the church service, it was a non-liturgical book, which contained liturgical elements only in exceptional cases.
• Since the kancionál was designed above all for laymen it was made up mainly of Czech strophic songs, and the presence of compositions of any other type (plainsong, or its translation into Czech and polyphonic compositions) was not a decisive factor.
• It is a characteristic of every kancionál that at least part of its contents was made up of songs designed to be sung by the whole congregation.
Calvin and the other Protestants
Strictly speaking, Calvinist music is limited to music composed for use in the reformed churches adhering to Calvin’s doctrines; as such it comprises unaccompanied, monophonic settings of the psalms (metrical psalms) and some canticles in rhymed vernacular translations, designed for congregational singing.
William Byrd (1543-1623)
English composer.
He was likely a pupil of Tallis. From 1572, joint organist with Tallis at the Chapel Royal.
In 1575, he and Tallis jointly published a collection of motets, Cantiones sacrae, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth had granted the two composers exclusive rights to print music in England and import foreign publications.
From 1587 to 1596, Byrd published several important collections of English music. Around this time, he left London for Essex as a member of the household of his patrons, the Petres.
By 1591 he had effectively abandoned court life, turning instead to the patronage and protection of the Catholic nobility. Taking up residence in Essex, Byrd set to work on his largest project: a cycle of music for the Roman Catholic Mass, intended for use in the private chapels of English recusants. Three settings of the Ordinary were completed and published in the early 1590s, one each for three, four, and five voices, while music for the Proper was composed over a period of some 20 years, published cumulatively in two books of Gradualia (1605, 1607).
Wrote some of his Gradualia for undercover masses held in Ingatestone Hall.
Little is known of Byrd’s life apart from various lawsuits over property and the fact of his Roman Catholicism, from the consequences of which he seems to have been protected at a time of anti‐Papism by his fame as a composer and by friends in high places.
In his motets and masses, Byrd showed himself the equal of his French and Italian contemporaries as a contrapuntist. He was an innovator in form and technique in his liturgical works, the finest of which is the Great Service. His madrigals are also of exceptional quality, and there is superb music in his solo songs and songs for the stage.
In his Fancies and In Nomines for string instrument, he established an English instrumental style of composition, but perhaps even more significant was his music for virginals, in which he developed variation form, and his series of pavanes and galliards for keyboard.
Among his pupils were Morley and Tomkins, and probably Weelkes, among many others.
