October at Wayland Middle School gives us two connections
to Renaissance music. The first happens every year:
Christopher Columbus was alive during the Renassaince
period, so we listen to music that he might have heard
during his lifetime. Lately we have had a second connection:
our drama students put on a play by Shakespeare.
Both Christopher Columbus and William Shakespeare were alive
during the Renassance, consequently we will be focusing some
of our band workshop music history work on music of the
Renaissance period.
The Renaissance period in music history was from 1400
(sometimes stated as 1450) to 1600. This period was a time
of great changes in Europe (please do note that we are
referring to European history when we refer to the
"Renaissance era" or "Baroque era" or "Classical era" of
music; these terms belong to Western music and Western
Civilization, and do not refer to what was happening in
Asia, Africa, the Americas or anywhere other than Europe).
The word "Renaissance" means a revival or rebirth. The
Renaissance period in Europe was a time of renewed interest
in the arts and in learning.
Many famous people were alive during the Renaissance:
Michelangelo
was painting the Sistine Chapel, Leonardo
Da Vinci was painting his Mona Lisa and making plans for
a flying machine, Copernicus
was trying to convince the world that the earth revolved
around the sun, not the sun around the earth, Shakespeare
was writing Hamlet , Romeo and Juliet and his
other plays, and Christopher
Columbus was asking Queen Isabella to finance his trip
to the west Indies. The printing
press was also developed in this era. No other single
invention made more difference in the history of music than
the printing press; with its development, music could be
duplicated more easily (it took a LONG time to copy music
out by hand!) and therefore more people could have copies of
the music. On a not so pleasant note, it was also the time
of the Spanish
Inquisition, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
expelled from Spain all Muslim, Jewish and Protestant
peoples.
Musically, many changes started taking place during the
Renaissance. Music of the Middle Ages tended to be primarily
unison songs (for voice) where instruments were just used
for accompaniment. During the Renaissance period,
instrumental music became popular and vocal music became
more polyphonic (more than one part -- monophonic means only
one melody line).
Another big change was in the music writing. Neumes,
which was the notation used in Gregorian Chant and developed
in the Middle Ages, showed only the direction of the melody,
up or down, and some of the ornamentation. Musicians in the
fourteen hundreds began adding flags and different kinds of
note heads to show the duration of the note (how long you
should hold it out) as well as its pitch (how high or low it
is). Last year when we were looking at the music of
Charlemagne's
time (remember Pippin ?), we learned that music
writing was just coming into being in the eleventh century,
and you really had to know the piece before the notation
made any sense; it was just a reminder of how the melody
went. (Click to see an example
of music writing from the 12th century (1100s); you will
see that it doesn't tell you much! Click the next link to
see music
notation of the early 16th century (early 1500s), the
Renaissance period; it has much more detail!)
A type of vocal music called a motet was developing during
the end of the Middle Ages and came into real importance
during the Renaissance. A motet was built around a melody
called the tenor. "Tenor" comes from the Latin tenere, to
hold, and was called such because the tenor melody was
usually the longer, held out notes. The duplum and triplum,
a second and third vocal part, were quicker notes, often
highly ornamented and rhythmically much quicker than the
tenor melody. The tenor part was usually taken from
liturgical chant (church music) and would be in Latin. The
duplum and triplum had totally different texts on different
subjects and could even be in different languages! So one
musical development of the Renaissance era was that vocal
music became much more complex, and to some people, more
interesting!
Madrigals were very popular during the Renaissance period.
Madrigals were secular (not religious) songs, usually love
songs, that were sung in multiple parts without any
instrumental accompaniment. The madrigal group at our high
school was created to sing this type of vocal music
(although they often sing popular tunes as well!).
Instrumental music took on a life of its own during the
Renaissance period. Music was written specifically for
instruments, although not usually for specific instruments!
The music was written with two or three or four parts and
the musicians played the parts on whatever instruments were
available. Instruments were grouped in "consorts", the same
type of instrument in more than one size ranging from high
to low. For example, the flute of the day was the recorder;
recorders came in four or more sizes: treble, alto, bass,
contrabass. Most often music was performed by a consort of
like instruments, possibly with a tabor (hand drum)
added.
Much of the instrumental music of the time was written in a
polyphonic form. In polyphonic music each part had its own
path -- the instruments were not moving together at the same
time. One instrument would start a melody, then a second
instrument would join with the same melody a few measures
later, then the third instrument, etc. -- much like a round.
The big difference between this music and rounds was that
once the beginning part of the melody was introduced, that
musical line might go off in a different direction than the
others, and sometimes all of the lines would come together
and play the same rhythms for a while. In rounds, everyone
sings/plays exactly the same melody from start to
finish.
Dance music was also a very popular style for
instrumentalists and sometimes the musicians would simply
play vocal music on their instruments. If you were in
Elizabethan England and going to the Globe
Theatre to see a play by William Shakespeare, chances
are you would find musicians there to entertain you before
the play began. They would be playing dance tunes in
consorts of like instruments,
or singing madrigals, or singing love songs to the
accompaniment of a lute.
You very well might even hear the love song, "Greensleeves"
(Some of us know this as the melody for the Christmas carol,
"What Child is This", but it was originally a Renaissance
song of lost love.)
Some important composers of the era were:
- Josquin des Pres, Netherlands, worked in Italy &
France (1440-1521)
- Guillaume Dufay, Netherlands, worked in France, Italy
& Burgundy
- Jean de Ockeghem, Netherlands
- Orlando di Lasso, Netherlands / Germany,
(1532-1594)
- Heinrich Schütz, Germany, (1585-1672)
- Michael Praetorius, Germany, (1571-1621)
- William Byrd, England, (1543-1623)
- Thomas Tallis, England, (1505-1585)
- John Dowland, England, (1563-1626)
- Dunstable, England, (died 1453)
- Henry VIII, King of England, (1491-1547)
- Orlando Gibbons, England (1583-1625)
- Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Italy
(1525-1585)
- Girolamo Frescobaldi, Italy, (1583-1643)
- Thomas Morley, England, (1557-1602)
- Andre Gabrieli, Venice, (1520-1586)
- Giovanni Gabrieli, Venice, (1557-1612)
- Claudio Monteverdi, Italy, (1567-1643), served as a
musical transition between the Renaissance and
Baroque
- Juan del Encina, (1485-c.1530) Spain
- Juan de Anchieta, Spain, (1462-1523), worked in the
court of Queen Isabella
- Francisco de la Torre, Spain, (1483-1504)
Women
composers of the era were largely ignored by history,
but most women of the time played musical instruments and
composed music. A few are noted in history:
- Maddalena
Casulana, Italy, (1540-1590). Maddalena was a nun and
she used her musical talents to create and perform music
of her church. "More than half of the music performed and
published in the time of Maddalena was written by women.
In Italy nearly two thousand of these musicians were
nuns, writing in the service of their church." (Kendall,
p.7)
- Queen
Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was also a fine musician and
composer. Her reign (also called the Elizabethan era) is
often thought of as the greatest age of English music.
This is the time of Shakespeare. (Click the link above to
see a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and learn more about
her, to learn why her Mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed
by Elizabeth's father, King Henry VIII, and to hear a
sound file of one of the Queen's compositions.)
- Vittoria
Aleotti/Raffaela Aleotta (c.1574-1646), also a
nun.
- Isabella
d'Este (1473-1539), Patroness of the arts and
musician herself.
- Tarquinia Molza, Italy, (1542-1617)
Information for this page was taken from the following
print sources and from some of the links on this page:
- Pincherle, Marc. An illustrated History of
Music. New York: Reynal, 1959.
- Grout, Donald Jay. A History of Western
Music. New York: Norton, 1960.
- Osborne, Charles, ed. The Dictionary of
Composers. New York: Taplinger, 1977.
- Kendall, Catherine Wolff. Stories of Women
Composers for Young Musicians. Toadwood,
1993.
- Tomb, Eric. A Coloring Book of Early
Composers. Santa Barbara: Bellerophone,
1989.
- Mundy, Simon. The Usborne Story of
Music. London: Usborne, 1980.
- The Waverly Consort. 1942 - Music from the
Age of Discovery, an audio CD. EMI,
1992.
- Music of Shakespeare's Time: Vocal &
Instrumental Works of Elizabethan England, a sound
recording. New York: Nonesuch Records.
- Plantamura,Carol. A Coloring Book of Women
Composers. Santa Barbara: Bellerophone,
1991.
- Sadie, Julie Anne & Rhian Samuel, eds.,
The Norton/Gorve Dictionary of Women Composers,
New York & London: Norton & Co, 1995.
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MS
Band Workshop schedule 
