Chapter 12 –Sacred Renaissance Music

Illustration 1: Excerpt from a motet by Palestrina (modern printing), courtesy of the Petrucci Music Library

This is probably a good time to stop, catch our breath, and keep things in perspective. Having read the above, one might try to conclude that the world suddenly became secular overnight. It didn't, and things don't happen that way (remember “A CHANGE OF REASONS”).

The church (soon to become churches) retained a great deal of power in society and continued to be an important underpinning of European culture.

By the end of the Renaissance, the majority of music that was composed was still sacred. The great musical masterpieces of the Renaissance are all sacred musici—from that fact alone one can logically get an idea of the powerful presence religion still had in society.

The levee, however, had started to crack.

To our modern ears, music of the Middle Ages sounds very impersonal and foreign because of its heavy use of intervals of fourths and fifths in harmony (C to F or C to G).

Late in the Middle Ages a group of composers centered around Burgundy began using the third as a consonant interval (C to E or E to G). This is much closer to modern harmony and much more pleasing to our earsii. The chord structures that clearly pull toward a home base (known as “tonal music”) didn't finally fall into place until the 1600s, but the trend had started.

Perhaps this is one more sign that music was being composed not for a mystical and remote Deity, but for the human race with tangible emotions.

Renaissance music is also generally concerned with clearly expressing the text. Renaissance composers began to devote more care to the mood of the music to make sure that it was appropriate to the text.

They also began using a device called word painting. Word painting is where a composer would deliberately shape the melody to imitate the imagery of the text. For example, a song about death would have a slowly falling melodic line, suggesting the body being lowered into the grave. A song about a bird soaring might have a melody line that rises high in the singer's range and moves around on high notes. On paper this sounds like it would have quite a comical effect, but in practice, it is very effective and is a technique modern composers still use.

Since the invention of polyphony in the Medieval era, composers looked for things to make the interactions between the musical lines interesting. Renaissance composers began using a device called imitation, that is, having one line copy another to a certain degreeiii.

With the Church being as powerful as it was—and very clearly seeing the power of music as an important part of its worship—the leading musicians of the era spent much of their careers in the employ of the church.

The musical forms of the era reflect the liturgical needs. One very common form of composition was the motet.

Compositions called motets were composed in the Medieval era, but outside of the fact that they were sung, there was little resemblence. Unlike its sometimes earthy Medieval counterpart, the Renaissance motet was a short a capella composition for voices based on a sacred or religious text. They were often elaborately polyphonic and, unlike their Medieval counterpart, were based on one text, not a series of layers.

While no large scale forms such as the symphony had yet evolved, settings of the Ordinary of the Mass were common and many have been handed down (and are still performed, although usually in a secular concert setting as opposed to being a part of church services). While there is no direct link to the symphonic forms of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Mass does have a logical emotional program that bridges a larger structure.

Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem were two figures who helped bridge the musical transition from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance.

The first great Renaissance composer was Josquin de Prez (ca 1450-1521). Often known just as Josquin, he is one of the first musical "personalities"--that is, one who began to develop a very brilliant personal style. Josquin was at home in sacred and secular music and composed hundreds of compositions. Musicologists are not sure exactly how many because copyists began creating anonymous composotions

Giovanni Gabrieli was another important figure. Composing at St. Mark's cathedral in Venice—shaped like a cross with four choir lofts above the congregation--Gabrieli composed music for choirs stationed in different choir lofts—in effect composing some of the first stereo and even quadraphonic music. For many years, one of Gabrieli's compositions by the name of Sonata pian e forte was thought to be the first piece of music to specify dynamics. Since then, one earlier piece of music with dynamics has been found.

The composer who represents the peak of sacred Renaissance music is Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina who eventually worked at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Palestrina's music is noted for its sheer beauty and smooth polyphony.

There is a traditional story that has it that composers had gotten a little out of hand and were making their polyphonic masses too complex and maybe even a bit raucous. According to the story, the Pope was ready to ban music from the Catholic Church. As a last resort, Palestrina composed his Pope Marcellus Mass to show how beautiful and reverent music could be while still having complex counterpoint—and that he was responsible for saving sacred music.

Historians have cast doubts on the above, but regardless, Palestrina Pope Marcellus Mass is beautiful enough to have accomplished that mission if it actually needed to.

Later in the Renaissance, there was an event that probably seemed unimportant at first. A young priest by the name of Martin Luther became wary of certain practices in the Roman Catholic Church. At first, he hoped to reform those practices and create change.

Things didn't work out quite like he intended. After being excommunicated and finding himself out on his own, Luther formed a breakaway protest church (which has picked up the name Protestant).

Within the Renaissance, the contribution of the Lutheran church was relatively minimal, however it would have a serious ripple effect that would ultimately have a large effect on music. Luther's emphasis was to have a worship environment where the congregation actively engaged in singing. On the surface it produced a tradition of Protestant hymns and not much else in the Renaissance.

The secondary ripple effect of the Reformation had a profound effect on history and music history. This created a crisis in the Catholic Church which began examining its music, among other things and did its own re-evaluation. The Counter-Reformation, as it became known, produced some of the greatest sacred music of an era known for its great sacred music. The political structure in Europe would also change greatly because there were now competing religions (Calvinism and the Church of England also formed during this time). This would have a profound effect on the direction of music in Western culture. Religion and its stronghold on thought (coupled with many scientific discoveries) would become greatly diminished by the end of the Renaissance.

With the diminishment of the political power of the Church, secular monarchies were more than willing to step up and take over the reins of power. i Many music critics will even go as far as say that greatest sacred music ever written in Western history was composed in the Renaissance. ii An English round Sumer is icumen In dating from the mid-13th century is one of the earliest known pieces of music based on thirds—definitely an exception to most of the music of the time. iii An interesting observation can be made here: when scientific thought began to creep into the thought of an era, the music begins to show more logical characteristics—as if it is saying (on a subliminal level) that action and consequence are linked. In the Classical Era (also called the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason), we find that very logical and orderly forms, such as the sonata form, suddenly appear. As eras embrace rebellion and anarchy, the logical structures disappear. In the same century as the discovery of the DNA molecule which defines the characteristics of the whole body, Arnold Schoenberg began to compose music with its own “DNA molecule” at the beginning that defines the characteristics of the whole piece. These are interesting coincidences. Then, again, maybe they're not. . .