Lesson 5: Genres of Renaissance Music

Genres of Renaissance Music

The music of the Renaissance had several differences from the music that came before it, although the changes were often gradual ones. One of these changes was that polyphony became increasingly complex in the songs and music of this period. Polyphony means that the music has two or more melodic parts and not just one voice with the music. This complexity was helped along by the greater vocal range of music in the Renaissance period.

Motets

During the Renaissance, many of the most important pieces of the era were written for use by religious institutions, particularly the music of the early Renaissance. Polyphonic Masses and motets were composed to be sung in Latin within the Catholic Church. Motets are 'pieces of music in several parts with words' and they involve varied choral compositions. In Latin, the term describes 'the movement of different voices against one another.'

Motets began in the thirteenth century, during the Middle Ages, but they were popular forms of music in the Renaissance. At the beginning of the Renaissance, motets were still largely pieces of small scale sacred music. One of the early Renaissance examples of this form is the Nuper rosarum flores, which was written in 1436. As the Mass became more elaborate so did the music included in the Masses. Composers began to experiment with more complex motets, with sections in different time and sections with differing number of voices. The motets evolved to a point where they are very similar to the madrigal form of music (which we will explore later in the unit), except that motets remained largely sacred forms of music and the madrigal secular.

Masses and Church Music

While some of the focus on the sacred in medieval music ebbed, the Renaissance period still experienced a great deal of sacred music and music meant to be part of the Mass or the new Protestant religious services. In the Catholic Church, the Latin Mass led to more sacred musical pieces. Five pieces of this liturgy were sung by choirs or individuals, including Kyrie eleison (which means 'Lord, have mercy'), Gloria in excelsis Deo ('Glory to God in the highest'), Credo ('I believe'), Sanctus ('Holy, Holy'), and Agnus Dei ('Lamb of God'). From the Gregorian chants that were widely used in the Middle Ages came more elaborate music for the Latin Mass. Composers added more voices and instruments to the liturgy.

The Protestant Reformation would also impact the music of the Renaissance. In an effort to separate itself from the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church was less rigid in its music. Martin Luther commissioned the composition of easy to sing melodies, often based on traditional folk songs. These hymns were known as German chorales. Many of these chorales (or adaptations of them) are still used in many Protestant churches today. One reason the chorale gained such a foothold was that the printing press allowed for the publishing of hymnbooks. By the end of the Renaissance, composers were creating original pieces of chorales and moving away from borrowing the music of older folk songs.

Madrigals

One form of music that became quite popular during the Renaissance was madrigals. Madrigals are voice compositions that employ a number of voices (often from three to six) but are unaccompanied by instruments. Madrigals tend to be through-composed, which means that they are continuous pieces of music that do not repeat. Each stanza or verse of a through-composed song has its own music, as opposed to having the exact same music for each stanza. Since madrigals were often composed to accompany poetry, each verse of the poem had its own music that reflected the tone and emotion of the particular verse. These songs tended to be secular rather than sacred and they are often polyphonic. This form of music began around 1520 in Italy; they were written by musicians employed by the famous Medici family of Florence.

In the late 1580s, a collection of Italian madrigals was published in England. The result was a surge of interest in this form of music. Madrigals were often performed in the homes of the rich upper class during this time. Three different forms of madrigals developed in England:

• Madrigal Proper: In this form, the madrigal was through-composed. It used quite a bit of word-painting, which is the matching of music to the words in the text. For example, if the text discussed going down, the musical tones might descend or if the text discussed going fast, the tempo of the music might be increased. Word-painting as a technique would carry over from the madrigal to other forms of music and to the music of later time periods.
• The Ballet: This form of madrigal was lighter in style than the madrigal proper and it was often danced to as well as sung. The ballet also differs from the madrigal proper in that it is strophic rather than through-composed. Strophic music has at least two verses set to the same music.
• The Ayre: This form of madrigal is performed in a number of different ways, including with or without accompaniment. If accompaniment is present, the instrument used also varied, from lutes to viols to other instruments of the period. When printed, ayres were often placed on the two pages of an open book, with the music on the left and the lyrics on the right page.

After about 1600, the traditional madrigal forms were changed. Instead of having a cappella songs with equally balanced voices, the madrigals were increasingly accompanied by various instruments, and the number of voices included increased. The soprano and bass voices became more important in the pieces and composers began to include more dissonance (which would become a feature of the Baroque music that would develop later).