PART 2: Video Intro

Instinct. It’s amazing how far it will carry you in music. The world is full of famous musicians—composers and performers—who do not read music at all but whose musical instinct is so strong it hardly seems to matter. Paul McCartney of the Beatles and the opera star Luciano Pavarotti are a good example of this. Irving Berlin, who wrote so many musicals and classic songs ("God Bless America") at his piano, could only compose in the key of F# (he needed to have a transposing keyboard built to be able to work in other keys!) And George Gershwin, who could compose masterpieces, needed to have his music orchestrated by someone else.

We saw how music developed throughout the middle ages, starting with one monophonic line, then adding lines, rhythmicizing them, and eventually building a complex polyphonic whole. During this period musicians were instinctively gravitating toward what we now call harmony, laying the foundations for the type of musical thinking that would revolutionize composition and extend right up to the present day. Toward the end of the Middle Ages musicians were already instinctively dealing with basic harmonic concepts, but they were unaware of their implications.

One of the important points made in the last lecture was that medieval composers conceived of their music as a series of lines, or voices, laid one atop another; they composed the parts successively. In other words, a composer would write one line from beginning to end, then go back and write a second line from beginning to end, and so on. Each line was, according to the arcane rules of composition, only required to be checked against the original line at cadential points. There was no requirement for each line to work with every other line, only that each line worked against the original.

From this we infer that they were essentially thinking linearly—that is, horizontally. The coincidence of pitches was just that- a coincidence and not a planned convergence. And yet, instinctively, medieval musicians were inching toward a new way of looking at music. One of the great breakthroughs of Renaissance musical theory then, was to begin to acknowledge the vertical alignment of pitches--in other words, the dimension of harmony. Because of this composers began to write parts simultaneously, listening to the totality of the sound.

Now that you understand this important contrast between successive and simultaneous composition you’ll be able to appreciate the words of the musical theorist Pietro Aron in 1524. He talked about the various parts of a piece (cantus, tenor, contrabass), and compared the old style of composing to the new:

Not coincidentally our first "full scores" date from the Renaissance as well, which makes perfect sense. Previously the parts to a polyphonic piece were written out separately in what is called choirbook format, roughly as shown at right.  The problem with this kind of notation, as you might guess, is that, since the parts do not line up, it is very difficult for each performer to gauge where they are in relation to the other parts. At this time there were also no measures, much less measure numbers--if anyone got lost it would be very difficult to sync up with the other players!

 

The newer "full score" method of notating all the parts, shown at left, was coordinated and aligned, reinforcing the idea of harmony and verticality—it also helped ensembles stay together.

The Renaissance also departed from Medieval practice in the area of instrumentation. In the Middle Ages instrumentation was largely heterogeneous, meaning that a poyphonic piece would commonly be performed by a mixed ensemble (i.e., a voice with a trumpet and organ; or a voice with a stringed instrument and woodwind.) This was not only an aesthetic decision—it was crucial to the clear delineation of each separate contrapuntal line. If not for heterogeneous instrumentation, many pieces would have sounded muddled because voices were packed in a quite small range and often even intertwined.

By contrast the Renaissance broadened the range of both vocal and instrumental compositions and gave birth to the concept of homogeneous instrumentation, developing whole families of instruments to play together with a blended, unified sound.  An example of this comes from the "viol" family (unfortunately, pronounced "vile"). Viol is short for "viola da gamba" a stringed instrument held between the legs. Viols were built in all sizes and a complete set of them (called a "chest of viols") ranged from small and high-pitched to large and low-pitched (at right is a bass viol). A family of viols playing together was called a "consort," and it became one of the most common sound-combinations of the Renaissance. Another instrument built in families was the recorder, which ranged from the sopranino (highest) recorder to the bass recorder.

 

If you’ve never heard a consort of viols you really must! It’s a gorgeous sound. Be sure to rent the movie Tout Le Matins du Mondes this weekend- it is absolutely superb, one of my all-time favorite movies, and based on the life of Marin Marais, who was one of the most celebrated viol players and composers ever. If you do see it, let me know your reactions!

Viola da Gamba Society of America American Recorder Society Historic Percussion Lute Society of America

As with the Middle Ages, music of the Renaissance had two different strands of development: the sacred and the secular. Sacred music held much prestige and authority, and carried on the intellectual tradition of music. This last point is worth our taking just a moment to explore.

How exactly was Renaissance sacred music intellectual? Basically in the composer’s approach to the formal organization of the music. Composers organized their music on very complicated principles, such as isorhythm and cantus firmus (basing the piece loosely around a single melodic line). Sometimes they used wild intellectual games to structure their pieces, as in the Mass Hercules Dux Ferrare by Josquin des Prez, which is based on a rather whimsical conceit: Josquin took the vowels of the name of his patron (Hercules, the Duke of Ferrara) and used them to make a melody that formed the basis of the piece. (Hence the name of the technique, "Soggetto Cavatto," meaning that the subject of the piece was carved out of the name.)  This is how it worked, translating vowels into the musical note names, ut-re-mi-fa-so-la-si.

Another example is Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum.  In the Renaissance, the technique of canon achieved unbelievable complexity, a far cry from your garden variety, "Row, Row, Row your boat."  In these sophisticated canons performers sang certain parts backwards, upside down, and in different meters! For example, here is the opening of the Missa Prolationum: it is written for four voices, but Ockeghem only notated two parts. The "trick" to extracting another two parts out of the notation is to read each part with two different rhythmic interpretations. In this way, one person performed the music quickly, while the other person performed the same line more slowly, forming a type of canon.  Here's an example of the opening of this mass:

Johannes Ockeghem: Missa Prolationum

In spite of this avid intellectual experimentation, throughout the Renaissance sacred music remained, by and large, more conservative than secular music—with the exception of the work of Josquin des Prez (1440-1521). Josquin wrote in all different styles and began to incorporate some of the more natural and accessible traits of secular music (which you’ll hear in the next lecture) into sacred music. His music is absolutely glorious- and here are four fine examples of it, three from the sacred literature and one secular:

The secular piece is called El Grillo which means The Cricket, and was part of an anthology based around animals. It belongs to a song type known as a "frottola." Frottole were populist in flavor, set basically syllabically, homophonic (in this sense, meaning chordal), usually in four parts, and very simple harmonically (meaning that only basic chords are used—nothing too fancy!) The words are:

The piece is well known not only for its good humor and snappy tune, but for being an early instance of what is called "tone painting": a literal description of something in musical tones. In this case, the line about "holding a long note" is drawn out by a comically long line. I hope you enjoy this one!

I thought you would be interested to hear a bit about musical activity during the Renaissance outside of Europe—indigenous music in America and Africa.

When the Spaniards arrived in Central and South America they discovered a flourishing musical practice and a culture which revered music for its salubrious effects. We know that the Aztecs and Incas had music schools with separate instruction for vocal and instrumental music. King Montezuma II in fact regarded the collapse of the Aztec music school building as the first bad omen before the arrival of the Spaniards. They sang to their crops to make them grow, and used music in rituals and war. The Aztecs had their own instruments, such as:

• the cocoloctli, a whistle flute of bone or clay with four finger holes and a spider-egg sac streched over the soundhole to give it a buzzing sound.

• The ayacachtli, a gourd rattle

• Teponaztli, a log drum.

There is every indication that Africans used instruments of their own devising as well as instruments imported from Europe during the 16^th century. In 1591 a European who had lived at the Congolese court for 19 years published a book containing descriptions of Congolese customs. He described the musical rituals used in war and at feasts, and detailed some of their instruments. In particular he described an instrument similar to a guitar with a top made of stretched skin and strings made of "the woode of Palme-Tree" and of "Elephantes tayle." Tiny pieces of iron and silver were hung on the strings to add a jingling sound. In many African countries even today musical instruments (such as the "dun-dun" or talking drum) are used to communicate actual speech. It seems evident that this was also the case with these old instruments, according to this same European account: "…by this instrument they doo utter the conceites of their mindes and doo understand one another so plainely, that every thing almost which may be explained with the tongue, they can declare with their hande in touching and striking this instrument."

© Copyright 1998, 1999  by Omnidisc inc.  All rights reserved.  Reproduction of this page and all pages contained in this site is strictly prohibited by law.