Renaissance music

From New World Encyclopedia
History of classical music
Medieval (476 – 1400)
Renaissance (1400 – 1600)
Baroque (1600 – 1760)
Classical (1730 – 1820)
Romantic (1815 – 1910)
20th century classical (1900 – 2000)
Contemporary classical (1975 – present)

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600, and encompassing works such as new pedagogy (Girolamo Diruta), mass settings (Arnold de Lantins), and songs for the lute and viol (Thomas Robinson). Defining the beginning of the era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the fifteenth century. Additionally, the process by which music acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one, and musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s. Recent contributions to musicological research however suggest that the concept should be avoided altogether, or at least used with utmost care, due to the extreme difficulties in defining the meaning and periodization of the term. The Italian humanist movement, uncovering and proliferating the aesthetics of antique Roman and Greek art, contributed to an accelerated revalidation of music on a conceptual level, but its direct influence on music theory, composition and performance remains suggestive.


Style and trends

Florence italy duomo.jpg
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Italian Renaissance
Spanish Renaissance
Northern Renaissance
  • English Renaissance
  • French Renaissance
  • German Renaissance
  • Polish Renaissance

The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see interval). Polyphony, in use since the twelfth century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the fourteenth century: the beginning of the fifteenth century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music—in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them.

The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths. This has since developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality.




During the period, secular music had an increasingly wide distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost. Secular music included songs for one or many voices, forms such as the frottola, chanson and madrigal.

Secular vocal genres included the madrigal, the frottola, the caccia, the chanson in several forms (rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée), the canzonetta, the villancico, the villanella, the villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared.

Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common genres were the toccata, the prelude, the ricercar, the canzona, and intabulation (intavolatura, intabulierung). Instrumental ensembles for dances might play a basse danse (or bassedanza), a pavane, a galliard, an allemande, or a courante.


Theory and notation

According to Margaret Bent (1998), "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness."

Kyrie Ockeghem, "Au travail suis," excerpt





Early Renaissance music (1400-1467)

The Burgundian School of composers, led by Guillaume Dufay, demonstrated characteristics of both the late Medieval era and the early Renaissance (see Medieval music). This group gradually dropped the late Medieval period's complex devices of isorhythm and extreme syncopation, resulting in a more limpid and flowing style. What their music "lost" in rhythmic complexity, however, it gained in rhythmic vitality, as a "drive to the cadence" became a prominent feature around mid-century.

Middle Renaissance music (1467-1534)

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, polyphonic sacred music (as exemplified in the masses of Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht) had once again become more complex, in a manner that can perhaps be seen as correlating to the stunning detail in the painting at the time. Ockeghem, particularly, was fond of canon, both contrapuntal and mensural. He composed a mass in which all the parts are derived canonically from one musical line.



Late Renaissance music (1534-1600)


The Roman School was a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance into early Baroque eras. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches; stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. By far the most famous composer of the Roman School is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose name has been associated for four hundred years with smooth, clear, polyphonic perfection.


Musica reservata is a term referring to either a style or a performance practice in a cappella vocal music of the latter, mainly in Italy and southern Germany, involving refinement, exclusivity, and intense emotional expression of sung text.



In the late sixteenth century, as the Renaissance era closes, an extremely manneristic style develops. In secular music, especially in the madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and Gesualdo). The term "mannerism" derives from art history.

Transition to the Baroque


We have already noted some of the musical developments that helped to usher in the Baroque, but for further explanation of this transition, see polychoral, concertato, monody, madrigal, and opera.

Noted Renaissance Composers


  • Bukofzer, Manfred F. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music. NY: Norton, 1950. ISBN 0-393-00241-1
  • Henry, Derrick. The Listener's guide to Medieval and Renaissance Music. NY: Facts on File, 1983. ISBN 0-871-96751-0
  • Judd, Cristle Collins (ed.). Tonal Structures of Early Music. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998. ISBN 0-815-32388-3
  • Knighton, Tess and David Fallows. Companion to Medieval and Renaissance music. NY: Schirmer Books, Maxwell Macmillan Intl., 1992. ISBN 0-028-71221-8

External links

All links retrieved July 27, 2019.



