Music History I

1
Music History I

• Lecture Notes 5

2
Popular Genre of the early Renaissance

• Sacred Vocal Mass and motet
• Secular Vocal chanson and frottola
• Instrumental keyboard and dance

3
Mass and Motet Structural Devices

• Isorhythm began to give way to cantus firmus
  technique in the mid-15th century in large-scale
  vocal works
• Isorhythmic technique became obsolete by the year
  1500
• Cyclic Mass All movements share a common musical
  idea, e.g. cantus firmus appears in the early
  15th century
• Musical coherence over liturgical propriety or
  the projection of the text

4
Se la face ay pale by Du Fay

• Total number of Masses six
• Two features (1) First Mass with a cantus firmus
  from a secular source (2) Cantus firmus no
  longer in the lowest voice allowing wider use of
  vertical sonorities (harmony)
• Your take on the melody
• Original notes of the chanson doubled in the
  Kyrie (Canon Tenor crescit in duplo)
• Gloria cantus firmus appears 3 times

5
More Structural Devices

• Head motif thematic idea in multiple voices
  placed at the beginning another type of unifying
  device or element of coherence
• Du Fay inspired methods (1)
  manipulating a cantus firmus (2) the unifying
  head motive (3) the musical canon

6
Some Notes on Notation

• Open circle perfect tempus, imperfect prolatio
• Half circle imperfect tempus, imperfect prolatio
• Circle with dot perfect tempus, perfect prolatio
• Half circle with dot imperfect tempus, perfect
  prolatio
• White notation no filling of noteheads less
  wear and tear on the paper (parchment giving way
  rapidly to paper)

7
The Lhomme armé melody

• Upward motion
• Straightforward rhythm
• Strong sense of tonal center
• Possible connection with political events

8
Conrad von Zaberns Rules for Ensemble Singing

• Sing with one spirit and accord
• Sing in proper measure
• Sing in the middle range
• Sing with discrimination
• Sing with devotion
• Sing with beauty and refinement
• His treatise published in 1473

9
Structural Techniques of Josquin des Prez

• (1) cantus firmus (2) Canon (3)
  Imitation (4) Paraphrase
• Cantus firmus sources plainchant, secular song,
  solmization syllables arranged arbitrarily
  (soggetto cavato)

10
More Compositional Devices

• Inversion melodic mirror image
• Augmentation Increase in the length of note
  values
• Diminution the opposite of augmentation
• Imitation in settings of the Mass the
  predominant structural principle by the middle of
  the 16th century

11
More on Josquin des Prez

• Missa Pange lingua an example of borrowing an
  existing melodic idea from a different work and
  elaborating it freely in all voices of the new
  work
• Ottaviano Petrucci published three books of
  Masses by Josquin des Prez. What was Petruccis
  first as mentioned in Lecture Notes 2?

12
The Motet of Josquins Day

• Liturgical
• Devotional
• Occasional

13
Word Painting

• Use of musical elements to imitate the meaning of
  a specific passage of text

14
Cross-Relation

• Simultaneous (or nearly so) sounding of two
  pitches a half step apart

15
Basic Rules of musica ficta

• Melodic rules to avoid certain linear tritones
• Harmonic rules to avoid tritones, semitones, and
  cross-relations

16
The Chanson

• From ca. 1420 to 1520
• Moved from a layered to a more homogeneous
  texture
• Rhythmic equalization of parts
• Increasing use of pervading imitation as the main
  structural device
• How to ID composers in the Chansonnier
  Cordiforme? Use other sources

17
Isaacs rondeau

• A paratactic structure where the composer uses
  successive points of imitation, with each section
  presenting new thematic material. This became the
  favored form of all chansons for the next 100
  years

18
The frottola

• Italian counterpart to the French chanson that
  had dominated the song repertory of Italy for
  most of the 15th century
• Frottole are settings of poems by native
  composers in their own language lighthearted and
  often sarcastic or ironic chordal textures and
  lively, dancelike rhythms with frequent use of
  syncopation and hemiola.
• Began with Italian composers in the 1480s

19
More on Music Printing

• Moveable type uses separate pieces of metal, each
  representing a letter or character in music a
  segment of the staff with an appropriate
  notational symbol
• The Petrucci method in 3 steps staves, text,
  notes
• The Attaingnant method each piece had staff and
  notes as a single unit

20
Hemiola

• A brief passage of duple meter rhythms within an
  otherwise triple meter context

21
Homophonic Texture

• A solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, a
  sound familiar to audiences well before the
  beginning of the Baroque Era
• True homophonic texture emerges in the Baroque Era

22
Antiphonal

• Back and forth musical sections between soloists
  and/or groups of voices a common feature of
  early church music

23
Your List of Composers

• The Focus Box on page 150

24
Renaissance Instruments

• Represented in paintings and literary works
• Playing by memory improvisation
• Doubled voices
• Idiomatic instrumental music (16th C)
• Early 16th century organ multiple registers,
  growth in size, range, of pipes stops several
  timbres portative and positive

25
More on Instruments

• The lira da braccio an additional set of drone
  strings to the left of the fingerboard
• Clavichord metal tangent to strike the string
  harpsichord metal tangent plucks the string
• Courses of strings on the lute and other related
  instruments a course is two strings tuned to the
  same pitch a lute could have 4 or 5 courses of
  strings

26
Still More on Instruments

• Viol sloped shoulders, flat back, fretted
  fingerboard, 6 strings tuned in 4ths (M 3rd
  between 2 middle strings) less tension than the
  violin viol and violin emerged at about the same
  time in the late 15th century.
• Andrea Amati opened his violin shop in 1564
• Your list of wind instruments
• A consort a group of the same type made in
  different sizes corresponding to vocal ranges
  (SATB)