Chapters 14-19 Notes PDF

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Chapter 14 - Music in Florence, 1350-1450 The Early Renaissance ● Renaissance means rebirth in the sense of a reawakening. Although the description of the Middle Ages as a “dark” age is a great exaggeration, the period of the early Renaissance (1350-1450) did see a reawakening of interest in the art of classical antiquity and a quickening of concern for the arts and humanities generally in poetry, painting, sculpture, and music. Florence ● Florence might fairly be called the home of the Italian Renaissance, possessing, as it does, more great art per square foot than any city in the world. Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo all graced Florence with their art at various times between 1320 and 1490. Florence was a city-state which by 1348 had a population of about 100,000. Trecento Music & The Squarcialupi Codex ● The period of the 1300s in Italy is called the trecento. By far the largest collection of trecento music is the Squarcialupi Codex, name after a Florentine organist who once owned the manuscript. Compiled in Florence about 1415, the Squarcialupi Codex contains 354 compositions and constitutes a retrospective anthology of all of forms of trecento music.

Italian Fixed Forms ● While the French had their fixed forms for secular vocal music in the fourteenth century (ballade, rondeau, and virelai), so too did the Italians, specifically the madrigal, caccia, and ballata. The trecento madrigal possessed AAB form. The madrigal Non al suo amante of Jacopo da Bologna (c1310-c1386) is typical of the madrigal around 1350 in that it is highly florid, but somewhat rigid rhythmically. The poem here, by the early Renaissance humanist Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), is exceptionally

beautiful, and typical of Renaissance poetry, is full of classical allusions.

Caccia and Ballata ● In Italian, caccia means hunt. A caccia is a composition involving a musical canon in the upper voices supported chases after the other, and the Italian texts of many caccias are above a hunt, either real or amatory (of the beloved). ● The ballata was a dance song with a choral refrain. Its music and poetic form is similar to the French virelai: A (ripresa) b (piede) b (piede) a (volta) A (ripresa). The terms piede (foot), volta (turn), and ripresa (refrain) recall the origins of the ballata as a monophonic dance. Francesco Landini ● Francesco (1325-1397) was the most important composer of the trecento. Landini was a blind organist who worked at the church of San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence) in the center of Florence. Surviving from his pen are 140 ballatas, thirteen madrigals, but only one caccia. ● Landini’s ballata Or su, gentili spirti was said to have been sung in 1389 in a garden party by two women accompanied by a gentleman on the lowest part. Landini’s music is characterized by flexible rhythms, florid melody, abundant thirds and sixths, and an idiosyncratic cadence, called the Landini cadence in which the cantus voice drops from the seventh degree to the sixth before jumping to the 8th and final degree

Chapter 15 - Music at the Cathedral of Florence Music for the Dedication - March 25th 1436 ● The dedication of the cathedral of Florence was celebrated by Pope Eugenius IV and the papal chapel, both then resident in Florence. The pope’s

magister capellae (master, or leader, of the chapel) was then Guillaume

Dufay (pronounced) “Du-fa-y”), a native of the region of Cambrai in northern France. Dufay’s Nuper Rosarum Flores ● To make the dedicatory ceremony more splendid, Dufay composed an isorhythmic motet Nuper rosarum flores (Recently roses). The isorhythmic structure of the work involves a complicated scheme, but can be reduced to a simple durational ratio of 6:4:2:3.

Schematic diagram of the four sections of Dufay’s Nuper rosarum flores ● The proportions 6:4:2:3 were those of the biblical temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and thus Nuper rosarum flores involves musical number symbolism. The musical and textual structures of Nuper rosarum flores are also informed by number symbolism in ways that allude to the Virgin Mary. Music & Architecture ● Dufay’s Nuper rosarum flores is one of the few pieces in the history of music to attempt to reflect in sound the dimensions of the architectural space for which it was created. Each of the dimensions of the cathedral of Florence, width, length, and height, is 72 braccia (the braccio, Italian for arm, is about 22 inches in length). Brunelleschi’s dome is 72 braccia wide and 2 x 72 braccia high. 2 x 72 = 144 and similarly 6 x 4 x 2 x 3 = 144. ● Bottom of page 112 →

Chapter 16 - Music in England

England during the early Renaissance ● Oxford University was greatly influenced by the University of Paris and so were English musical forms influenced by those from France. At this time

England was very much a rural society. Among English cities only London, with a population of about 75,000 in 1300. Rondellus ● Despite the influence of French music on the English, several distinctive musical styles originated in England. One was called rondellus. In rondellus, two or three voices engage in voice exchange or, more correctly, phrase exchange. J.S. Bach later, coincidentally, used the same procedure in some of his fugues ○ Voice 1 → a b c d e f ○ Voice 2 → b c a e f d ○ Voice 3 → c a b f d e

Rota and the Summer Canon ● The English historically have had a fondness for glees and catches (canons, or rounds). The most famous of all medieval English compositions make use of rondellus techniques as well as canon. It is entitled Sumer is icumen in

(Summer is coming in), or simply the Summer Canon. It involves four upper voices which sing a canon that continually circles back to the beginning (the English call this a rota, Latin for wheel). Beneath the four-voice rota are two bottom voices (the English call a supporting voice a pes, Latin for foot). Here the two pes voices sing a rondellus, continually exchanging the same two phrases. English Faburden ● The English has a fondness for faburden, a type of singing that arose when singers improvised around a given chant; one voice sang above the plainsong at the interval of a fourth, and another sang below it at a third; at the beginnings and ends of phrases the bottom voice would drop down to form an octave with the top one. Faburden was just one specific type of a general class of vocal music called English discant, an improvised homorhythmic

style making abundant use of parallel 6/3 chords. Continental Fauxbourdon ● English faburden apparently influence musical practices on the Continent because soon, around 1420, a similar style emerged in France and Italy called fauxbourdon. The only essential differences between fauxbourdon and faburden were a. That in Fauxbourdon the pre-existing chant was placed in the highest voice, and b. Composers tended to write out the top and bottom voices and leave only the middle voice to be improvised ● A portion of Guillaume Dufay’s setting in fauxbourdon of the hymn Conditor alma with the chant (x) lightly ornamented in the upper voice and the middle voice following it, improvising at the interval of a fourth below. King Henry V ● Henry V (r. 1413-1422) was a dashing English king who ruled brilliantly and died young. He was also a composer of sorts, or at least a Gloria and a

Sanctus is ascribed to “Roy Henry,” in the Old Hall Manuscript. The Old Hall Manuscript ● A polyphonic Gloria ascribed to King Henry in the Old Hall Manuscript, now preserved in the British Library. The Old Hall Manuscript is a collection of 147 English compositions, mostly Mass movements and motets, serving the English royal chapel. Several motets in honor of the warrior St. George may link the book to the chapel of St. George on the grounds of Windsor Chapel, near London. The Carol ● King Henry’s stunning victory at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) was soon celebrated in Agincourt Carol. The English carol, related to the French Carole (chapter 11), was a strophic song for one to three voices, all of which

were newly composed. The carol begins with a refrain, called the burden which was also repeated at the end of each new stanza. What results is the musical form of strophe plus refrain, one frequently encountered in “Country Music” today. The first and second burden and the first stanza of the Agincourt Carol are as follows: Burden I and II and first stanza of the Agincourt Carol of King Henry ● Burden I (two voices): ○ Deo gratias ● Stanza I: ○ Our king went forth ● Burden II (three voices) ○ Deo gratias John Dunstaple and the Contenance Angloise ● John Dunstaple (c1390-1453) was a mathematician, astronomer, and musician who was left us approximately sixty polyphonic compositions. His style was said at the time to represent the contenance angloise (English manner), though it is uncertain precisely what this was. One element encountered in Dunstaple’s music is panconsonance, a style in which almost every note is a consonant interval couched within a triad or a triadic inversion. Dunstaple’s often dissonance-free style can be seen in his three-voice motet Quam

pulcra es (How beautiful thou art), the text of which is drawn from the Songs of Songs, a particularly lyrical book of the Old Testament.

Chapter 17 - Music at the Court of Burgundy

Burgundian Lands ● The dukes of Burgundy of the house of Valois were four powerful princes, cousins to the kings of France, who reigned in succession from 1364 until

1477. By 1477 they had carved out a small kingdom in all but name, one that included not only the duchy of Burgundy in eastern France but also almost all of the Low countries (modern Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands). The most important composers associated with their court were Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois. Binchois’s Chansons ● Although Gilles Binchois (c1400-1460) wrote sacred Masses and motets, excelled in the genre of the polyphonic French chanson, which at this time were still written in one of the three formes fixes (ballade, rondeau, or virelai). Each of Binchois’s nearly sixty chansons is a small gem of lyricism. His ballade Dueil angoisseus (Anguished mourning), sets melancholy poem by Christine de Pisan (c1364-c1430), an important female poet to the court of Burgundy. Burgundian Cadence ● Dufay, Binchois, and their colleagues cultivated a type of cadence in threevoice writing that is allowed them to have a low base line yet also fill in the fifth degree of a final chord at a cadence. This procedure is called the Burgundian cadence (octave-leap cadence), in which the contratenor (bassus) line leaps an octave at the end of important sections of the song.

Guillaume Dufay’s Lamentation ● On May 29th 1453, the CHristian world suffered grievous loss when the Ottoman Turks defeated the Byzantine Christians and captured their capital, Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey). To commemorate the loss, Guillaume Dufay composed four lamentations, only one of which survives today. Such a lamentation was sung a lavish banquet, called by contemporaries the Feast of the Pheasant, hosted by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, intended to rally support for a crusade against the so-called infidels. Dufay’s Lamentatio sanctae Matris Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae

(Lament for the Holy Mother church of Constantinople).

The Armed Man Tune ● Guillaume Dufay and many other composers of the Renaissance constructed polyphony Masses upon a spritely melody called L’Homme arme tune. The text, although in French possess religious symbolism, for a calls to every good Christian, be he/she a crusader going off to ward or the good Christian soldier fighting against the snares of the devil in the everyday battle of life. ● Sometime during the late 1450s, Dufay composed a four-voice polyphonic Mass during the Armed Man tune as the structural basis. He took the tune and placed it in the tenor, where the melody sounded forth in each and every movement. In so doing Dufay created a cantus firmus Mass-- a cyclic Mass in which the five moments of the Ordinary are unified by means of a single cantus firmus (a Latin adjective meaning “firm” or well-established”).

Chapter 18 - Music at the French Royal Court

● During the Hundred Years’ War the fortunes of the French suffered a serious reversal--the English eventually captured the French capital, Paris. The medieval wheel of fortune began to turn positively for the French, however, when Joan of Arc (c1412-1431) led new king, Charles VII, to the city of Reims and had him crowned there on July 16th 1429. Although the winds of war were now blowing favorably, three generations of French kings preferred to reside not in Paris, but in the Loire Valley some 200 miles to the south. The French royal chapel of each of these kings was directed by Johannes Ockeghem (c1410-1497), a composer of renown who enjoyed unusual longevity and influence. Johannes Ockeghem ● He was born in the Burgundian lands south of Brussels, but by 1451 had joined the French royal chapel in the Loire Valley, where he remained until his death in 1497. Surviving from Ockeghem’s pen are twenty-five chansons,

six motets, and fifteen Masses. In his chansons Ockeghem demonstrates the first systematic attempt to structure compositions by using imitation (one voice duplicated the notes and rhythms of another for a brief span of time). Canonic Chanson Prenez Sur Moi ● Ockeghem’s Prenez Sur Moi (c1460) is one of the earliest fully canonic chansons (there is no non-canonic supporting base). The follower voices enter not at the unison or octave, but at the voice. Ockeghem’s Missa Prolationum ● Ockeghem was a master of musical artifice, posing and solving difficult technical problems in music. His Missa Prolationum (c1475) involves two separate mensuration canons worked out among the four voices. A mensuration canon is one in which two voices perform the same music at different rates of speed, one pulling farther and farther ahead of the other.

● Late Middle Ages - pgs. ● Late Renaissance pgs. 148-190 ● 190-231...