EDWARD LOWINSKY_Music in the Culture of the Renaissance

Music in the Culture of the RenaissanceAuthor(s): Edward E. LowinskySource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 509-553Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707674Accessed: 22/08/2010 22:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=upenn.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Pennsylvania Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toJournal of the History of Ideas.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=upenn

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707674?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=upenn

MUSIC IN THE CULTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE *

EDWARD E. LOWINSKY

Of all cultural manifestations none has been so long and so consistently neglected by the historian of Western civilization as music. This may have been due on the one hand to the inaccessibility of early music to the layman and on the other to the preoccupation of the historian of music with the immediate and gigantic task of tran- scribing, editing, and analyzing the vast body of music that has come down to us from the early Middle Ages. The advent of recordings of old music1 and the beginnings of a musical historiography centered around the cultural life of the time 2 are slowly initiating a change which, it may be hoped, will be reflected in the work of the future historian of civilization.3 The interpretation of the Renais- sance in particular has been subject to such sharply divergent views, the clash of opinions has been so violent,4 that the historian of culture cannot fail to remember that there is one body of evidence he has not taken into account: that is the evidence of music. He may seek an answer to these principal questions: does music occupy a place in Renaissance culture important enough to warrant the as- sumption that it has something to contribute to the understanding of that period? If it does, what are the changes and innovations in the music of the Renaissance and how do they relate to the surround- ing culture? In other words: what criteria can be established that will allow a clear differentiation between the music of the Middle Ages and that of the Renaissance?

* The following is a somewhat enlarged version of a paper read at the Renais- sance session of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in De- cember 1952 on the invitation and under the chairmanship of Prof. Wallace K. Ferguson. A revised version was also read to the University Seminar on the Ren- aissance at Columbia University in May 1953.

1 The most comprehensive and responsible collection available thus far is the Anthologie Sonore, ed. Curt Sachs. The recordings of medieval and Renaissance music by Pro Musica Antiqua (Safford Cape) deserve special recommendation.

2 To mention only a few works we refer the reader to H. Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Potsdam, 1931). P. H. Lang, Music in Western Civilization (New York, 1941). A. Ein- stein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1949). This approach goes back to Ambros' Geschichte der Musik (1862-68) and Winterfeld's Joh. Gabrieli und sein Zeitalter (1834).

3 After these lines were written, The Mind of the Middle Ages (200-1500) by Frederick B. Artz (New York, 1953) appeared, one of the few books that attempt to give music its place in the unfolding of medieval civilization.

4 See Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, Five Cen. turies of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).

509

510 EDWARD E. LOWINSKY

I

Chronologically, a good case can be made for a rough delimitation of the music of the Renaissance to the period of 1450-1600. In so doing the music historian is faced with the problem of how to interpret the period from 1300-1450. It cannot be denied that around 1300 a clear and unmistakable break occurred in the development of music, a turn so obvious that the musicians of that time themselves felt compelled to speak of an "ars nova." This is the title of the treatise on music written c. 1320 by the French musician and poet Philippe de Vitry,5 friend of Petrarch. This is probably the first time in Western music that musicians speak of a "modern art." The "ars nova" of the Trecento has enough elements in common with both medieval and Renaissance concepts that its interpretation either as late Middle Ages or as early Renaissance can be defended on good grounds. In order to establish clear criteria we will concentrate on the more mature period between 1450 and 1600. With the analytical tools thus prepared we may then return to a brief examination of the Renaissance elements in the music of the Trecento. To press such an analysis into the confines of one paper necessitates a view at which distances shrink and differences are re- duced to the most fundamental outlines. It would take a book to describe what is left out.6 But we are here not concerned with description but with an analysis of the significance of musical phenomena within the culture of Renaissance society.

Geographically, the Netherlands (then including northern France, Belgium, and Holland) and Italy are the leading nations in music from 1450-1600, as they are in the visual arts. France proper, Ger- many, England, and Spain compete for second place, while Switzer- land, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Portugal, and other smaller centers of music are on the periphery.

The steady rise of music in the fifteenth century is reflected in the reorganization and consolidation of the great musical establishments and in the increasing number and prestige of the musicians employed. I will illustrate this with data from two vital centers of Renaissance music, the Papal Choir in Rome and the famous choir of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.

The Papal Choir in Rome had ten singers in 1442.7 In 1483 their

5 For the most recent literature on de Vitry as poet and his circle of friends see D. W. Robertson, Jr., "The 'Partitura Amorosa' of Jean de Savoie," in Philological Quarterly XXXIII (1954), 1-9.

6 Cf. Gustave Reese, Music of the Renaissance (New York, 1954), a magnificent achievement.

7 See for the following F. X. Haberl, " Die r6mische 'Schola cantorum' und die papstlichen Kapellsanger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts," Vierteljahrs- schrift fur Musikwissenschaft III (1882), 189ff.

MUSIC IN RENAISSANCE CULTURE 511

number had increased to 24, in the years following and throughout the sixteenth century the membership fluctuated, rising at times to 30 singers, but holding usually more closely to 24, which number came to be regarded as the ideal size for the Papal Choir. Besides, in 1480, another musical institution was founded in Rome which, under Pope Julius II, became known as the Capella Giulia and which functioned in the Basilica of St. Peter. By its use of the organ it was distinguished from the Papal Choir functioning for the Papal court in the Sistine chapel, where no instruments were allowed to intrude upon the sacred services. As the number of singers grew, their privileges increased. Pope Eugenius IV created the economic foundation for the Papal Choir with his bull Et si erga of 1444 in which the income of the singers from benefices, prebends and canonries, as distinguished from their monthly salaries, was stabilized. The Papal singers were to be preferred in their claims on such ecclesiastical benefices to any other claimants. Under Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) their salary was increased from 5 to 8 ducats monthly. Under every new incoming Pope the privileges of the Papal singers were confirmed in a new bull and substantial amplifi- cations were added. Under Innocent VIII (1484-92) certain pro- visions were made which illuminate the actual situation through the prohibitions proposed: a Papal singer shall not keep a concubine, he shall not frequent taverns and other inhonesta loca, he shall al- ways appear in his choir gown, and he shall not wear his hair down to the neck. The same document provides that cardinals shall not keep in their houses trumpeters, other musicians, buffoons, and clowns.

At the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp 8 we find a similar development in the fifteenth century, with the difference, however, that the Antwerp establishment surpassed the Papal Choir in size and magnificence and that its reorganization preceded that of Rome by about one generation. In an edict of 1410, Pope John XXIII

granted the chapter's request to have the revenues of 12 prebends reserved for singers and the distribution made solely on the basis of musical merit. This edict paved the way for the engagement of lay singers, whereas previously singers could be selected from the ranks of priests only. It means, in other words, the admission of the pro-

8 The data on Antwerp are based in part on my excerpts from the transcrip- tions of records made by Leon de Burbure, one-time archivist of the Cathedral. De Burbure's vast literary estate is today in the City Hall of Antwerp. I gave a sketch of the music in Antwerp in a paper on The Musical Life of a Flemish City in the 16th Century read before the New York Chapter of the American Musico-

logical Society, Feb., 1947 (see abstract in Bulletin of the American Musicological Society [1948], 23).


fessional musician into the church service. Needless to say, this gave rise to a great improvement in the musical services. In 1443 the Cathedral boasted 51 singers; in 1480, 63; in 1549, 69.9 Adult males sang not only the bass and tenor parts, but also, through special training in falsetto singing, the alto part. The soprano was sung by choir boys, whose number grew from six to twelve between 1401 and 1445. They lived in the house of the magister choralium, who was responsible for their musical education and received payment from special funds for their upkeep, while the magister gram- matices took care of the boys' humanistic education. To the singers must be added the organist and the player of the carillons. The figures mentioned reflect two facts: that Antwerp in the fifteenth century was slowly rising to the position it occupied throughout the first sixty years of the sixteenth century as the richest industrial city of Europe, and that Flanders was the leading center in Western music and the creative force behind the great development of the art of counterpoint and choral singing of the Renaissance. The increase in the number of singers was accompanied by an increase in salaries, privileges, gratuities, in brief, by a steady rise in the economic and social position of the singers in Rome and Antwerp. Musical organizations such as the establishments at Rome and Antwerp served as models for smaller organizations in other towns and countries. They were responsible for the marvellous development of church music throughout the Renaissance. The great services, in particular High Mass and Vespers, were celebrated to the accompaniment of polyphonic masses, motets, hymns, magnificats, Marian antiphons. No expenses were spared for composers, singers, and instrumentalists for the celebration of the high holidays, especially Easter. It is well to remember the social character of church functions and church music at the time. On important political occasions, at receptions of foreign dignitaries, the celebration of a Solemn Mass was inevitable; a Te Deum would invariably be sung after a victorious battle, at the conclusion of a treaty, at the joyous

9 The number of singers at the Cathedral of Antwerp surpasses by far that customary in other churches. I wonder whether this has something to do with the strange practice of celebrating several offices in the Cathedral at the same time because of the vastness of the edifice. At least this is what Albrecht Diirer, in the diary of his Flemish journey (1520-21), reports: Die Frauenkirche zu Antorff (Ant- werp) ist uebergross, also dass man viel Amt auf einmal darinnen singt, dass keins das andere irrt. Und haben allda kostliche Stiftungen, da sind bestellt die besten

Musici, die man haben mag. (Quoted by H. Kretzschmar in Musikgeschichtliche Stichproben aus deutscher Laienliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts, in Festschrift fiir R. v. Liliencron [Leipzig, 1910], 119).


occasion of the arrival of a royal heir; during wartime a Da pacem Domine in diebus nostris would be sung in solemn procession, and indeed we have innumerable compositions based on the text and melody of this antiphon throughout the sixteenth century.

At the wedding of Costanzo Sforza with Camilla of Aragon in 1475 there was celebrated, according to a description printed in that same year, a triumphal Mass with organs, flutes, trumpets, numerous tambourines, and with two choirs, each of 16 singers, that sang in alternation.l0

It is from contemporary records of this kind that we learn of such unorthodox performances of a Mass with two alternating choirs, wood and brass instruments and-most surprising-with tambourines. The choirbooks of the time consist of vocal parts only, leaving participation of instruments to the discretion of the choirmaster and the resources available to him. The theorists are silent about such practical questions. They concentrate on problems of notation and counterpoint. The use of tambourines for dance music is attested to by paintings of the time. Expense accounts of the Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap at 'sHertogenbosch for 1531-32 published by Albert Smijers11 refer to a payment for diverse musicians "met tamboreynen en herpen" during a procession for Our Lady. But tambourines in the performance of a solemn Mass reveal a secular gaiety invading the sacred sphere that-together with the practice of basing a polyphonic Mass on worldly ditties- goes a long way in explaining the increasingly bitter complaints about the profanation of church music throughout the sixteenth century which culminated in the strictures and regulations of the Council of Trent.

Religious music was not limited to the Church. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a great number of lay congregations were founded. The impact of these lay congregations not only on spirit-

0 The imprint of 1475, which I studied in Florence, was reprinted by B. Gamba (Venice, 1836). Otto Kinkeldey quoted the report of this extraordinary performance of a solemn Mass in his Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1910), 165-6. He interprets the tamburini as kettledrums. The Italian term for kettledrum is tamburo; it occurs frequently in Italian inventories of instruments from the 16th century (cf. G. Turrini, L'Accademia Filarmonica di Verona [Verona, 1941], 26, 41, 180, 188). I am inclined therefore to interpret tamburini as tambourines. With regard to the mention of alternating choirs so long before Willaert, see H. Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931), 217-8, and examples in M. F. Bukofzer, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 182-4. Cf. also note 53.

11 See Tijdschrift, Vereeniging voor Nederlandsche Muziekgeschiedenis XVI, 87.


ual but also on artistic and musical development is far from being fully explored. They usually owned a chapel within one of the larger churches of the town and were devoted to the Virgin Mary or to a particular Saint. One of the most brilliant congregations was the Confraternity of Our Lady in Antwerp whose membership was made up of the wealthy merchants, bankers, and artisans of that city. The charter of the Confraternity was written in 1482; it provided for a daily service to be celebrated between 5 and 6 o'clock in the evening by four singers, twelve choirboys, the choirmaster, an

organist, and a priest. The service was preceded by ringing of the church bells and playing of the carillons, still today a specialty of the Netherlands. Before and after the singing the organist played on the organ. During the service he played in support of or in alternation with the choir. In 1506 the Confraternity installed in the Chapel of Our Lady its own magnificent organ and engaged its own organist. From the account books it appears that the musical service of the Confraternity differed from that of the cathedral in that it had only a small choir, but favored the extensive participation of instrumental music, especially of wind instruments, whereas the cathedral ordinarily employed only the organ in support of its large choir.

In Italy there was a similar movement whose antecedents were the medieval congregations called Laudesi, the singers of the Lauda, a spiritual song in the vernacular. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries artisan guilds organized themselves in a manner similar to the confraternities in the North. Sansovino, in his Annotazioni al Novelliero del Boccaccio (Venice, 1546) describes their services as follows: "In Florence there are several guilds of artisans, among them the guild of Or San Michele and S. Maria Novella. Every Saturday after Nones they gather in Church and sing there five or six lauds or ballades for four voices [on texts] composed by Lorenzo de Medici, Pulci, and Giambullari and after each laud the singers change and when they have finished they unveil, to the accompaniment of organ playing and singing, the picture of the Madonna, and herewith the ceremony is ended."

Obviously the modest musical service of the Florentine artisan guilds celebrated only once a week cannot compare with the splendor of the daily vesper service for choir, organ, and instruments in- stituted by the wealthy merchants of the Antwerp Confraternity. A similar magnificence can be found, however, in the Italian aristocratic academies flourishing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Different academies were devoted to different aims. But in many of


them music played an essential, in some of them a central, role. The Accademia Filarmonica of Verona, founded on the 1st of May 1543, still preserves today a marvellous collection of instruments and of music written and printed in addition to detailed inventories and records dating back to the earliest days of its existence.l2 Founded for the express purpose of cultivating music, the Academy engaged famous composers and instrumentalists who were to teach the 29 selected members. The composer had to be available for private teaching of the members every day after Nones, he had to set to music whatever text the Academicians would select. The Academy met weekly for a kind of Collegium musicum from which strangers were excluded. On special occasions such as May 1, the day of foundation, and during carnival, there would be performances for a wider public on the basis of invitations issued. The two main differences between the Antwerp confraternity and the Veronese Academy are that the Academy was primarily devoted to the cultivation of secular music as compared to the religious nature of the musical performances in Antwerp, and that the Academicians had to occupy themselves with musical composition and performance, whereas the confraternity in Antwerp engaged performers from outside its own ranks. The significance of the Italian academies for the flowering of Cinquecento music in that country was well recognized at the time. Pietro Cerone of Bergamo wrote in his great musical com- pendium (El melopeo y maestro) of 1613 3 ". .. in many cities of Italy there are several houses called 'academies,' which are solely places of reunion for singers, players, and composers, who de- vote themselves to their art for two or three hours [. .] 14 The most famous masters of the town usually take part in them, and after the performance of their most recent compositions and the termination of the concert usually discuss some musical problem on which occasion everyone sets forth his opinion in a pleasant manner and concludes his discussions with profit to all." The French " academie de poesie et musique" founded by Baif in 1570 and preceded by the Pleiade led by Ronsard and by Jean Dorat's academy was undoubtedly influenced by Italian models. Its official purpose was the restoration of music in the sense of the ancient Greeks. Naturally,

1 Giuseppe Turrini, LAccademia Filarmonica di Verona (Verona, 1941). 13 Quoted by A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1949), I,

199. 14 Here Einstein adds [" a day."] From the statutes of the Accademia Filar-

monica in Verona it would appear that the gatherings there took place once a week; see Turrini, op. cit., 19.


the model for the academies was the Platonic academy in Florence at the time of Lorenzo de Medici. Marsilio Ficino, its guiding spirit, believed that music was for the soul what medicine was for the body. In his De vita sana he recommended quiet and harmonious music for voice and lyre whenever the soul is out of tune and beset by melancholy ("Mercurius, Pythagoras, Plato iubent dissonantem animam vel moerentem cithara cantuque tam constanti quam con- cinno componere simul atque erigere "). Ficino himself loved to sing and to improvise to the accompaniment of his lyre in the circle of the academy.1

The greatest centers for the cultivation of secular music were the numerous courts in Italy, the kingdoms, duchies, and the patrician homes of the cities. It is characteristic that the Netherlands with its paucity of courts and its multitude of churches and congregations led in church music, while Italy with its many independent political centers and its academies led in the development of secular music. We have many reports on the role of music in the social life of the Italian courts. The most famous is contained in Baldessar Castig- lione's II Cortegiano of 1528. Well-known is his description of courtly music, his insistence that the courtier himself be able to sing and to play but that he wait for the right time and the right company and engage in performing music and using the instruments be- fitting his nobility. It does not behoove the courtier to use wind instruments. The noble instrument par excellence is the viol and the sweetest music is that produced by a quartet of viols. Har- monious also are the keyboard instruments. Ensemble singing is praised, but much to be preferred is solo song with the accompaniment of a viol. The right occasion for music making is when dear friends meet in company and no other business is at hand, and especially when ladies are present, for their aspect softens the soul of the listener and makes it more accessible to the sweetness of music, and it also fires the spirit of the musician.

Nicola Vicentino writes in his musical treatise L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica of 1555 on the vocal and instrumental chamber music performed at the court of Ferrara. Of his many fine points I single out one, that chamber music be produced with intimate and soft tone as against the massive sonority of Church or open air music. Luigi Dentice, a Neapolitan aristocrat, published in

15 Cf. A. della Torre, Storia dell'Accademia Platonica di Firenze (Florence, 1902), 788ff. See also F. A. Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Cen- tury (London, 1947), and P. 0. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1943).


1553 his Duo Dialoghi della Musica in which he gave delightful de- tails of the private concerts of singers and players in the house of Donna Giovanna of Aragon in Naples. Famous were the concerts of the Venetian aristocratic lady "Pecorina" which were directed by the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, choirmaster at San Marco from 1527 on, and commonly, if exaggeratedly,"6 referred to as founder of the Venetian school of music. In 1594 Bottrigari, a noble- man of Bologna, who was from 1575-85 in Ferrara, reports in II Desiderio about the "concerto grande" in Ferrara at which every conceivable instrument was employed together with a great number of singers. He also tells about the marvelous concerts presented by 23 nuns of San Vito in Ferrara, under the direction of a nun. Here, too, voices and all kinds of instruments were employed. But Bottri- gari does not fail to inform us also about the lovely vocal serenades performed by humble lay congregations in the dark streets of Bologna on warm summer evenings. That the populace itself was deeply imbued with the love of music we know not only from such enthusiastic accounts of Flemish popular music making as given by Guicciardini in his Descrittione de tutti i Paesi Bassi in 1567, or from Marin Sanuto's diaries which tell of the street ballads heard in Venice; 17 we know it also from the statutes of Flemish guilds of musicians.18 These statutes make it amply clear that there was a tremendous demand for music for weddings, for dancing, for carnival, for the yearly fair, for processions and a number of other occasions. Literary documents, or paintings and miniatures depicting popular scenes with singers and instrumentalists, offer interesting sidelights on the intimate connection of music with the life of the people.

Obviously, the actual folk-song of the Renaissance has largely died out, for it is in the nature of folk-music to live in oral tradition. Some folk-songs can still be traced in the secular polyphonic art forms, especially in the Italian frottola.l1 It is a matter of specula-

16See the preface of G. Benvenuti to his Andrea e Giovanni Gabrieli e la Musica Strumentale in San Marco, in Istituzioni e Monumenti dell'Arte Musicale Italiana, I (Milan, 1931). Cf. also Giovanni d'Alessi, "Precursors of Adriano Wil- laert in the Practice of Coro Spezzato," in Journal of the American Musicological Society V (1952), 210.

17A. Einstein, op. cit., I, 85. 18Cf. L. de Burbure, Apercu sur l'ancienne corporation des Musiciens Instrumentistes d'Anvers dite De Saint-Job et de Sainte Marie Madeleine, in Bulletins de l'Academie Royale de Belgique, 31eme annee, 2me serie, XIII (Bruxelles, 1862).

19 Cf. Knud Jeppesen, "Venetian Folk-Songs of the Renaissance," in Papers read at the International Congress of Musicology held at New York, 1939 (1944), 62ff., and A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (op. cit.), I, 83ff.


tion how many of the secular melodies that composers immortalized by writing a whole polyphonic Mass on them were folk-songs. But there is an interesting layer of music that moves between the popular and the art sphere, music that is, in the words of Richard L. Greene, "popular by destination." Greene used that felicitous expression with reference to the English carols. A British publisher has recently issued the first complete edition of about 120 carols of the fifteenth century preserved with music.20 In these simple two and three part songs, mostly on vernacular texts with Latin inter-

spersed, we have a precious record of what certain modern publishers would call "semi-popular" music. Recently I learned of the existence of a Belgian manuscript written between 1495 and 1505 which contains Flemish and Latin rhymed texts of a spiritual nature set to music in a tuneful, but contrapuntally very primitive style, mostly for two and three, a few for four voices-the first document un- covered that proves that something akin to the carols existed in Flanders.21 The Lochamer Liederbuch shows a somewhat different but comparable genre in Germany, and in Italy we have the tradition of the Laudesi, monodic in the Middle Ages,22 polyphonic in the Renaissance.23

There is one important social institution which we have not mentioned and of which I will again give two examples, one in Antwerp, the other in Venice. The account books of the city of Antwerp show that the city employed regularly five town musicians, all instrumentalists. From inventories of the first half of the sixteenth century we can see that the town musicians had to be experts on a great many instruments. According to an inventory drawn up in 1531 the town owned 28 flutes, 19 cromornes, three trumpets, a field trumpet, a tenor fife, one alto and one tenor shawm. In 1548 payments were made for repairing the city's viols. Since the Flemish book-keepers were animated by the same love of detail for which the Flemish painters are justly famous we know the function of the

20Mediaeval Carols, ed. by John Stevens. Musica Britannica, IV (London, Stainer & Bell, Ltd., 1952).

21 Cf. Fred. Lyna, "Een teruggevonden handschrift," in Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, deel XLIII, 289-323. I owe my acquaint- ance with this interesting manuscript to the kindness of Mr. E. Geeurickx of Opwijk, Belgium, who has prepared a modern edition. We hope he will succeed in finding a publisher for his work.

22F. Liuzzi, La Lauda e i Primordi della Melodia Italiana, 2 vols. (Rome, 1935). 23K. Jeppesen, Die mehrstimmige Italienische Lauda um 1500 (Copen- hagen-Leipzig, 1935).


town musicians very well. They appeared at all receptions of dignitaries; they played at the colorful processions of the city; on the evenings of holidays they played on the tower of the Cathedral; they were indispensable at all official banquets. In 1483 the custom was introduced for the town musicians to perform evening music daily in the town hall, most likely from the tower. Besides, on holidays they joined the singers in the cathedral in the performance of solemn musical services and their names appear constantly in the account books of the Congregation of Our Lady at the cathedral in Antwerp.

Unfortunately, there are no records left that would give us similarly exact accounts of the musicians employed by the Signoria in Venice. The reason given 24 for the fact that neither singers nor players are mentioned in the Atti di Procurati is that their engagement was left to the choirmaster at San Marco. But in the Atti of 1567 25 the name of Girolamo da Udine, famed cornet player, appears as leader of the instrumentalists in the employment of the Republic of Venice. Silvestro Ganassi, the author of the earliest treatise on the art of flute playing, published in 1535 in Venice, calls himself in the title of his book "sonator d(e) La Ill(ustrissi)-ma S(ignori)a d(i) V(enezi)a." The woodcut adorning the title page shows five musicians-the same number as that employed by the city of Antwerp-three of them playing the recorder, one singing, and the fifth holding a recorder in one hand and keeping the other hand on the table, lifting his forefinger as if he were giving light indication of tempo and meter. From Venetian paintings and from contemporary chroniclers we know that the instrumentalists were employed mainly for the many festive processions on the Square of San Marco. A painting of 1496 by Bellini 26 of a solemn procession on San Marco's Square reveals participation of nine singers and at least seven players of wind instruments. Undoubtedly, the institution of the town pipers goes back at least to the fourteenth century. A notarial act of 1310 gives evidence of the existence of five town pipers (four tubatores and one trombetta) employed by the city of Lucca.27

Archives, chronicles, and paintings from all over Europe demonstrate that the town musicians were a universal social institution rooted in the Middle Ages but mainly developed in the Renaissance.

24 Francesco Caffi, Storia della Musica Sacra nella gia Cappella Ducale di San Marco in Venezia (Venice, 1855), II, 25. 25 Ibid., 56.

26 See for a reproduction Istituzioni e Monumenti dell'Arte Musicale Italiana, I (1931).

27 The act is transcribed in its entirety by Luigi Nerici in his Storia della Musica in Lucca (Lucca, 1897), 39-40.


In England they were called " waits," 28 a name derived from their original function as watchmen who "piped watch" at stated hours of the night. Of course, the public records are silent on the role of music in private homes, but there are many other sources that testify to the intense love and cultivation of music in the patrician houses of Flanders, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England. Among these sources are especially dedications and prefaces of imprints of secular music, literary documents, writings on music, and again paintings, drawings, and etchings of family life which show the institution of the family ensemble. The immense literature of French chansons, Italian and English madrigals, the German Lied, the Spanish villan- cico, the Flemish song is a vivid testimony to the art of musical ensemble cultivated in the privacy of the Renaissance home. Of the many documents available I will quote one passage only from the beginning of Thomas Morley's dialogue entitled A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music published in London in 1597 (new edition by R. A. Harman [New York, 1952]). There Philomates tells his brother Polymathes that he had been, the night before, at the banquet of Master Sophobulus where-and I continue in his own words-" by chance master Aphron came thither also, who, falling to discourse of music was in argument so quickly taken up and hotly pursued by Eudoxus and Calergus, two kinsmen of Sophobulus, as in his own art he was overthrown; but he still sticking to his opinion, the two gentlemen requested me to examine his reasons and confute them; but I refusing and pretending ignorance, the whole company condemned me of discourtesy, being fully persuaded that I had been as skilful in that art as they took me to be learned in others. But supper being ended and musicbooks (according to the custom) being brought to the table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part earnestly requesting me to sing but when, after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, everyone began to wonder: yea, some whispered to others demanding how I was brought up, so that upon shame of my ignorance I go now to seek out mine old friend Master Gnorimus, to make myself his scholar."

On our brief tour of the musical institutions of the Renaissance we have seen how each institution served a different social function and how this difference of function was responsible for the difference

28See L. G. Langwill, The Waits, A Short Historical Study, in Hinrichsen's Musical Year Book, VII (London, 1952), 170-183. By far the best presentation of the subject is found in W. L. Woodfill's Musicians in English Society (Prince- ton, 1953; see esp. chs. 2 and 4). For France see Frangois Lesure, "La com- munaute des 'Joueurs d'instruments' au XVIe siecle," Revue hist. de droit franqais et etranger (1953), 79-109.


of musical forms and styles. The church choir cultivates the great liturgical forms of music with Latin text: the Proper and the Ordi- nary of the Mass; the congregations share in this repertory, but con- centrating on the vesper service, they emphasize the Marian anti-

phons, Magnificats,29 hymns and motets appropriate to the liturgical character of that service. In the humbler congregations and in some of the more popular processions the vernacular creeps in and spreads out in the form of the English carol, the Italian lauda, the French psalm, the Flemish spiritual song and the later Flemish psalm, the so-called souterliedeken. At court and in the aristocratic home, in the academies and in the houses of patricians a secular art in the vernacular flourishes, the ever present urge to dance has produced a varied literature of dance music: the basse danse, the pavane, the gaillarde, the branle, ronde, and allemande. The musically illiterate, too, had their own songs and dances, as we know from literary, pictorial, and, in small part, from musical sources. Even the choice of instruments was sociologically and functionally influenced. The principal instrument used in the church service was the organ, wind instruments participated on high holidays. The lay congregations on the other hand cultivated instrumental music and in Antwerp the town musicians were employed regularly for the daily vesper service of the Congregation of Our Lady. In Venice, where most state functions were celebrated in the open air, trumpets, cornets, trombones as well as recorders were used. But for the indoor enter- tainments of the aristocratic society of Italian courts string instruments were preferred. Similarly, Venice with its tradition of public and state affairs loved choral performances and gave a prominent place to double choir polyphony, whereas the courts withdrawn from the common world and emphasizing the uncommon individual became centers of accompanied solo song and solo play. The courts of the Renaissance were the cradles of vocal and instrumental virtuosity. But virtuosity was more than mere technique, it was closely allied with the art of improvisation. The singers improvised their embellishments, the lute virtuoso improvised on well-known tunes, and the best among them appealed not only to the senses but to the emotions. Francesco Milano is said to have thrown his listeners into

29 The polyphonic setting of the Magnificat was an innovation of the Renais- sance. The earliest polyphonic Magnificats were composed in the 15th century. It would be worth while to investigate whether there was a connection between the celebration of the vesper service by lay congregations and the emergence and in-

creasing popularity of the polyphonic Magnificat, or whether the latter may be ascribed to the greater emphasis on the vesper services in the 15th and 16th centuries in general. Both factors may have contributed.


a state of ecstasy and to have played on the scale of their emotions as surely as he did on the strings of his lute. The miraculous effects ascribed to music by the ancient Greeks, the legends of Amphion and Orpheus, the stories of Pythagoras, Plato's belief in the corrupting and ennobling powers of music, all were constantly in the minds of the Renaissance musicians. They were subjects of serious study, of passionate debate, and of continued attempts at modern revival.

II

Surely, where the musical life is so intense and so intimately re- lated to the social life there must be many ways to demonstrate the union of life and art in the Renaissance. The most obvious is found in the texts which were set to music. Since Renaissance music is for the greatest and most important part vocal music the choice of texts is in itself highly revealing. A history of changing styles, tastes, and fashions, a history of religious feeling, of literary evolution and even an abbreviated history of political events could be gleaned-at least in outline-by a mere study of the texts Renaissance composers set to music.

If none of the paintings of Venus by the Italian masters of the Renaissance had survived we would know of their existence through that charming Latin motet by the great Cipriano de Rore,30 composer at the court of Ferrara. Here Venus is pictured wandering through Italy and coming to the duchy of Ferrara. Discovering a painted likeness of herself she bursts into tears of bitter jealousy: quid iuvat esse deam-" what good is it to be a goddess, if mortals can render my beauty feature for feature."

If we had lost all other records of the religious developments of the sixteenth century we would have the powerful witnesses of the Lutheran, Calvinist, Huguenot, Anglican musical services in their respective languages. We would know something of the tremendous hatred engendered by Luther's break with the Church from the motet text: Te Luterum damnamus, te hereticum confitemur, te errorum patrem omnis terra detestatur. Tibi justi et universe religiones, tibi clerici . . .proclamant Dirus dirus dirus dirus blasfemus in deum sabaoth .... The text continues to heap such epithets as adulterius apostata maledictus, etc., on the Reformer's head. This motet, found in a Bolognese manuscript of the first half of the sixteenth century31 composed by "Matre Jan" (- Maistre Jhan), can serve

30 11 terzo libro di Motetti a 5 voci di Cipriano Rore (Venice, 1549), no. 4. Cf. my Das Antwerpener Motettenbuch Orlando di Lassos und seine Beziehungen zum Motettenschaffen der niederldndischen Zeitgenossen (The Hague, 1937).

31 Bologna, Liceo Musicale, Ms. Q.27, fo. lOv-llv.


as an example of the constant need of reconstructing the historical context which the music alone can merely hint at. This Italian motet against Luther is a unique case, as far as I know. Only a very unique situation can have produced it. Though the personality and life of Maistre Jhan are shrouded in obscurity we know that he was choir- leader at the court of Ercole II, duke of Ferrara. In 1528 the duke married Renee de France, who was a passionate believer in the Ref- ormation. She opened her castle as a refuge to Reformed artists and men persecuted because of their adherence to the Reformation. The increasing severity of the struggle between the old and the new faith made a crisis between Ercole and Renee inevitable. In 1536, the year in which Calvin himself spent almost two months in Fer- rara, Ercole removed all of Renee's proteges from his court. At the same time attempts were made to lead Renee back to the old faith. These efforts failed. After her husband's death in 1559 Renee re- turned to France where she openly espoused the Reformed cause. I suggest that Maitre Jhan was commissioned by the duke, not before 1536, to set the violently anti-Lutheran text to music. We may assume that the duke created an occasion at which Renee was sur- prised with the performance of this motet, possibly in the presence of some of the theologians and high officials of the Church called by Ercole to aid in her reconversion. We may imagine with what differ- ing emotions the parties to the dispute listened to the performance of the motet.

But aside from external events an eloquent witness to the change in religious feeling within the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church is the change of the text repertory of the motet. Throughout the fifteenth century the celebration of the liturgical times of the day and the year, the adoration of the Virgin and of the Saints, and the story of Salvation stood in the center of the texts set to music. Starting in the last decades of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century there is a significant and increasingly sharp shift from the objective world of hieratic symbolism to the subjective realm of man's relation to God in the face of sin, suffering, and death. It is not by chance that the motet texts deal time and again with great figures in the depth of despair: Job, David mourning the death of Jonathan or the death of Absalom, innocent Susanna facing calumny and death, Rachel weeping over her lost children, the Prodigal Son, and especially Christ suffering on the Cross-the polyphonic passion as well as the passion motet are creations of the Renaissance. For the first time in the history of polyphonic music 32

32 In the Middle Ages the passion was presented in dramatic form and partly spoken, partly sung in Plain Chant.


the figure of the suffering Christ comes to occupy a place comparable in significance, if not in quantity, to the musical depiction of the Virgin in the blessed moment of the Annunciation. Now the innumerable compositions of the Ave Maria, the Salve Regina, the Regina coeli are joined not only by the Stabat Mater dolorosa but also by passion motets like the one by Josquin des Prez: 0 Domine Jesu Christe, adoro te in cruce pendentem. The German publisher Johannes Otto of Nuremberg33 refers to that motet by Josquin when he exclaims in the preface of one of his editions of 1538:

Quis pictor eam Christi faciem supplitijs mortis subiecti exprimere tam graphice potuit quam modis musicis eam expressit JOSQUINUS.

What painter could express Christ's suffering in the hour of torture and death as graphically as did Josquin with musical means!

Very conspicuous is the use of psalm texts and especially psalms of despair and contrition in the motet literature of the Renaissance, starting with Josquin about 1490 and continuing right through the sixteenth century.

On the other hand the Renaissance composer began to occupy himself with setting to music the verses of the Song of Songs. The increasingly free and passionate style used in these compositions suggests that many musicians substituted an earthly image for the allegorical one which official interpretation attached to it.

There exists, naturally, a multitude of compositions celebrating the birthdays and weddings of emperors, kings, dukes, and noble citizens. There are numerous funeral motets mourning the death of people of rank. There are compositions referring to political events: war, peace treaties, political negotiations, meetings of political poten- tates. In Rome I discovered a manuscript, entirely unknown before, whose origin could be traced to Florence between 1527 and 1530. A number of texts deal with the events leading to and happening during the siege of that city, when Florentine Republicans made a last heroic attempt to throw off the yoke of the Medici.34

Not only does the range of texts set to music broaden immensely, they reveal with a new degree of sharpness the changes in the mental climate of the age. The restlessness and disenchantment of the late Renaissance are mirrored vividly in texts of a stoic and even cynical nature. Susato of Antwerp publishes in 1546 a motet on the text:

33 See the preface to the Secundus Tomus Novi Operis Musici (1538). 34 See my study on " A Newly Discovered Motet MS in the Bibl. Vallicelliana

in Rome," Journal of the American Musicological Society (1951), 173-232. 35Liber secundus sacrarum cantionum quinque vocum (Antwerp . . . 1546),

no. 16 (the concluding piece).


Decipimur votis tempore fallimur Mors deridet curas anxia vita nihil.

We are deluded by promises. Time deceives us. Death laughs at worries. Anxious life is nothing.

A similar sentiment characteristic of the pessimism of the Counter- Reformation is voiced even more briefly in the text set to music by Orlando di Lasso and published posthumously in 1597:

Mortalium iucunditas volucris et pendula.

The pleasure of mortals is transitory and elusive.

Already at the beginning of the century ancient poetry had appeared on the musical scene. The odes of Horace were set to music by the Swiss humanist Glareanus,36 by Petrus Tritonius in his Melopoeae of 1507, by Hofhaimer, Senfl, and others. Vergil's verses on Dido abandoned by faithless Aeneas inspired a whole series of motet-like compositions by composers of the Renaissance37 and a number of operas by composers of the Baroque.

It was characteristic of the Middle Ages that its greatest composers, men like Leonin and Perotin, did not sign their names to their compositions; we know them only from the testimony of contemporary theorists. In the Renaissance a number of works are still ascribed to the fertile composer known as incertus autor. But the identity of the overwhelming majority of compositions is well established. Guillaume Dufay requested in his last will that his composition Ave regina coelorum38 be sung at the hour of his death. To the liturgical text of the Marian antiphon he added the words: Miserere tui labentis Dufay ne peccatorum ruat in ignem fervorum. " Have mercy on thy dying Dufay lest he fall into the hellish fire of sinners." In this work, dated as of 1464, medieval faith meets the pronounced individualism of the Renaissance. Since the days of Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) composers have been known to enter their own names into the texts which they set to music. Composi- tions on the death of great composers date from the same period and in Josquin's immortal De'ploration de Johannes Okeghem39 there appear at the end the names of the noblest disciples of Okeghem including that of the composer himself.

36 In his famous Dodecachordon (Basel, 1547; Lib. II, c. 39) he recalls: Multi anni lapsi sunt cum Iuvenis in Horatij Odas nescio quas finxeram Harmonias ....

37 Cf. O. Strunk, "Virgil in Music," The Musical Quarterly (1930). 38 Publ. by H. Besseler in Capella, Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Musik (Kas-

sel, 1950), no. 4. 39 Publ. by A. Smijers, Werken van Josquin des Pres, vijfde aflevering pp. 56-

58.


Such was the power of music in the Renaissance that it evoked a whole poetic literature written expressly to be set to music. Thus originated the poesia per musica of the Italians 40 and the madrigal verse of the English,41 the bulk of which survives exclusively in the various sets of Italian and English madrigals.

In the field of secular music and particularly in the French chanson we meet with texts not only light and frivolous but of an untarnished obscenity such as no other period in the history of music has witnessed. Undoubtedly, the obscene is not an invention of the Renaissance. But we do witness an extraordinary phenomenon: the composers who wrote the solemn Masses, Magnificats, and Marian antiphons were the same ones who dignified incredible frivolities to the degree of clothing them in the most attractive four-, five-, and six-part choral music. We have here another demonstration of the fact that the texts found in Renaissance music embraced life in its totality. Nothing was excluded from it. If the obscene anecdote had a place in familiar conversation, so it had a place in music. To be sure, many of these obscene chansons were later republished in religious versions. For example, the French Huguenot Pasquier edited in 1575 and 1576 Lasso's compositions with French texts, the Mellange d'Orlando de Lassus . . .avec la lettre changee et reformee, a second edition of which appeared in 1582.42 The religious versions of secular chansons are an illustration of the troubled conscience of an era that was bubbling over with vitality and beset by gnawing doubts.

Some of the greatest musicians of the time, composers who were famous for their church music at that, did not shy away from ap- proaching the sphere of blasphemy. What is one to think of a poem set to music by Orlando di Lasso which runs like this:

II etait une religieuse De l'ordre de l'Ave' Maria Qui d'un Pater etait tant amoureuse Que son gent corps avec le sien lia. L'abesse vint demander qu'il ya, Lors respondirent l'un et I'autre: Le Pater et l'Ave Maria Sont enfiles en une Paternotre.

40 Cf. Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, II, 167ff. 41 Cf. H. E. Fellows, The English Madrigal Composers, 2nd ed. (London, 1948),

143; idem, English Madrigal Verse, 1588-1632 (Oxford, 1920). 42 Cf. A. Sandberger, " Orlando di Lassos Beziehungen zu Frankreich und zur

franz6sischen Literatur," in Ausgewdhlte Aufsdtze zur Musikgeschichte (Munich, 1921), 112ff.


To be sure, satires on nuns and monks were as old as the institution of the monastery itself. Stories concerned with a nun or a monk found in flagrante delicto were plentiful at all times. But here the most sacred Christian symbols are involved, the daily prayers of the Ave Maria and the Pater noster. Their frivolous use was not designed to further the devotion of those engaged in prayer. While similar frivolities are not unknown in medieval literature, their appearance in music is a new phenomenon. It must be admitted that to set to music such flippant verses means to formalize them in a most peculiar manner. Yet, the same Orlando di Lasso wrote liturgical compositions on the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. It is not easy to interpret this phenomenon satisfactorily. The least one can say is this: Lasso's attitude is indicative of an advanced degree of detachment; detachment is the basis for criticism; criticism enters when traditional concepts are tested against new experience; if they fail in that test a crisis ensues that may lead either to a reformu- lation of the old or to new concepts altogether. That both these processes took place in the Renaissance could be concluded from a mere study of the texts of Renaissance music, even had all other documents perished.43 This attitude on the part of the Renaissance composer gave rise to much controversy throughout the sixteenth century. I will quote only the opinion of Thomas Morley, not a prudish man by any standards, who in his Introduction (p. 294) had this to say on the madrigals: " This kind of music were not so much disallowable if the poets who compose the ditties would abstain from some obscenities which all honest ears abhor, and sometime from blasphemies such as this ch'altro di te iddio non voglio 4 (I wish no other God but thee) which no man (at least who has any hope of salvation) can sing without trembling." Morley, himself the fore- most composer of madrigals in the English tongue, puts the blame on

43 Cf. Edward E. Lowinsky, Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet (New York, 1946); see the chapter on "The Religious Background," 111-134. Lasso's attitude betrays also a certain ambivalence which is highly characteristic of the late Renaissance; see the chapter on " The Meaning of Double Meaning in the 16th Century " in the same book.

44 I do not know the source of this verse. Of course, texts in which a lady is addressed as goddess are plentiful in the Cinquecento. Bartolomeo Tromboncino, famed frottolist of Mantua, sets to music a poem beginning with the words Signora anci dea mea (Ms. Biblioteca Naz. Centr., Florence, Panciat. 27, fo. lllv- 112r). Cipriano de Rore of Ferrara writes a motet on a lady with the name Argilla: Dispeream nisi sit dea vera deumque propago (II terzo libro de motetti a 5 voci di Cipriano de Rore. .. .[Venice, 1549], xxiii. Cf. Antwerpener Motetten- buch, 57 and 85.)


the poets. Maybe he wanted to keep in good standing with his col- leagues. Otherwise he might have suggested that the composer re- frain from using such poems. Actually, both the poet and the composer merely held up a mirror to the society which asked their services.

In the light of all this it will cause little wonder if we find the immense enthusiasm for music at all levels of Renaissance society matched by an intense fear and violent condemnation of the seduc- tive power of the ethereal art. Hieronymus Bosch placed musicians, musical instruments, and choirbooks in the inferno in several of his hell paintings. In one of them musicians are placed in the immediate company of gamblers. Savonarola, preaching in music loving Florence, fulminated against the " suoni e canti," and on the pyre of "Vanities" lit by his followers during the carnival season 1497 and 1498 there were lutes and music books on top of paintings, statues and other objects of secular art.

III We come to the last and to the most fundamental question: does

the change in mentality which is evident from the choice of texts find expression in the music itself? Are the changes in Renaissance music as compared to medieval music merely matters of a " technical evolution " or do they involve a basic change in the outlook of the composer? It can be demonstrated, I believe, that not only were new forms, new styles, new techniques, and new instruments developed during the Renaissance, but that the very nature of the process of composition itself changed. Two aspects may be regarded as basic to the process of composition in the Middle Ages: the first involves the use of preexistent melodies, preexisting formal schemes, and preexisting rhythmic schemes. Preexisting melodies refer to what was known as cantus firmus. A cantus firmus is a melody borrowed either from the Gregorian chant or from other, e.g., secular sources and used as a basis for constructing a piece of polyphonic music according to the laws of counterpoint. Preexisting formal schemes refer to the so-called formes fixes, poetical and musical designs like the rondeau, the virelai, the ballade, the carol, the ballata: a small number of well-defined forms rooted in the aristocratic art of the troubadours and trouveres and transferred from this monodic genre to polyphonic composition. Preexisting rhythms refer to the so-called rhythmic modes which were taken over from ancient poetic meters: iambus, trochee, dactyl and so on. Medieval notation of music before 1300 had no symbols for rhythm, the in-


vention of which must be credited to the ars nova. The medieval composer had to rely instead on such schemes as the rhythmic modes. Medieval music was not only based on preexisting melodies, it was formally and rhythmically fitted to ready made patterns.

The second basic aspect of medieval composition is connected with the prevailing technique of cantus firmus composition. The different voices in medieval polyphony are composed successively, one after the other. The resulting conglomerate sound was not the prime aim, but the by-product of the addition of one layer of melody to another. The harmonic effect was not entirely arbitrary, since the addition of voices was regulated by certain general conventions which governed the selection of consonances and dissonances.

The Renaissance composer did not abandon at once the deeply rooted foundations of preexisting forms, rhythms, melodies and successive composition. Gradually, he advanced new ideas and tried out entirely new conceptions and techniques, which slowly won the upper hand in the struggle between tradition and innovation. This is not the place to describe in detail the struggle between old and new or to trace the gradual emergence of the new. I limit myself to an elucidation of the new principles. The first principle stems from the desire of the Renaissance musician to arrive at a musical expression free from all shackles. This involves abandoning the use of preexisting melodies, rhythms, and forms. The second principle derives from the urge of the Renaissance artist to conceive of his work as a well planned and carefully organized whole rather than a structure of several successively erected layers. This involves the abandonment of the successive technique of composition and its re- placement by the technique of simultaneous conception. Clearly, the simultaneous composition of polyphonic music is possible only where the composer has learned to think in harmonies. It is well known that a good musician can sit down at the piano and improvise in four voices at once. That means he can think in harmonies. It is less well known that the capacity to think in harmonies had to be acquired and developed at a certain period in history, and that period was the Renaissance. It is in Italy around 1480 that we find whole compositions written in four part harmony with the melody in the highest and the root of the harmony in the lowest part. Har- mony was projected and conceived from one point, the "root" or the bass part, and the terms "homophony " 45 or " chordal style "

45On the justification of applying the term "homophony" to Renaissance music, see my study on "English Organ Music of the Renaissance," Part II, The Musical Quarterly (Oct., 1953), note 73.


and "familiar style" should be strictly limited to this harmonic technique. Indispensable for the new harmonic technique was the recognition of thirds and sixths as consonances by the Spanish theorist Bartholomeo Ramis in 1482, who had studied in Salamanca, but lived and taught for the greater part of his life in Bologna and Rome. According to Pythagorean theory, which reigned supreme throughout the Middle Ages, thirds and sixths had been considered dissonances, for mathematical reasons only.

The roots of this harmonic style can be found in two phenomena, the fauxbourdon and the rise of tonal harmony. Both were brilliantly analyzed and convincingly traced back to the leadership of Guillaume Dufay and the time around 1430 by Heinrich Besseler in his work on Bourdon und Fauxbourdon.46 The term fauxbourdon designates the accompaniment of a discant melody by fourth and sixth parallels resulting in a composition moving throughout in six- three chords 47 but starting from and ending in an octave-five chord. We may see in this technique, which has its antecedents in English usage and in the English predilection for thirds and sixths, a manifestation of the spreading enthusiasm for these consonances and of the overwhelming desire for a full sensuous sound. Tonal harmony as found in a series of three part chansons by Dufay and some of his contemporaries shows the beginnings of the feeling for tonic-domi- nant relationships. Already in compositions of Ciconia, who had wandered from Liege to Padua, the bass began to assume the function of carrying the root of harmony.

Undoubtedly, one may regard the fauxbourdon as a primitive but highly significant sound technique: while its entirely mechanical character cannot be denied, it embodied nevertheless the first experience of simultaneous chordal thinking in three parts. To what degree simultaneous conception operated in Dufay's, three-part compositions awaits investigation. If I may venture a considered guess, it is that careful analysis will tend to show the beginnings of simultaneous planning, especially in two part writing, whereas actual simultaneous conception of more than two parts will probably be shown to be limited to certain isolated passages of harmonic emphasis.

An entirely different process of simultaneous composition is followed in the fugal polyphony of the Renaissance, the systematic beginnings of which fall around the same time as harmonic simultaneous planning: c. 1480. Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) is the first

46 Leipzig, 1950. Cf. also Ch. van den Borren, Guillaume Dufay, 1926. 47 Fourth and sixth parallels seen from the highest voice are six-three chords seen

from the lowest.


composer to use this technique not as an occasional device-as such it can be traced back to the early thirteenth century-but as the structural basis for a whole series of extended compositions. Here a number of musical subjects are taken up by one voice after another resulting in a free, unified, and yet complex contrapuntal organism: free because it is not tied to a cantus firmus, unified because the same thematic substance penetrates all parts, complex because each part presents the theme at a different time while the other voices go against it contrapuntally, avoiding simultaneity in rhythm and meter. This results in a tonal structure unified harmonically, diversified rhythmically and metrically. Such a structure cannot be conceived either successively or strictly simultaneously: here the composer pro- jects each part in relation to each other part; even the theme itself is invented with an eye toward how it is to be used and by how many voices. An increase in the number of voices restricts the freedom of movement of each of them, a decrease expands it.

Simultaneous conception of harmony and of polyphony emerges as the most essential single factor in the epoch-making changes in the process of composition in the Renaissance. It is the center around which a great many phenomena are grouped and from which they derive their meaning and their coherence with one another. It has been shown that the beginnings of choral singing date back to the time around 1430, medieval polyphony having been performed by soloists.48 It is significant that these beginnings coincide with the emergence of fauxbourdon. And while fauxbourdon may not have originated in a choral conception it has been shown to have been "taken over by the trend toward choir music." 49

Around 1480 the ideal of choral music has been entirely realized. This is evident in the music of the mature Josquin.50 He knows how to write a fully singable style not only for one or two 51 but for all voices, and the increasing care with which he applies the text to

48 Cf. M. Bukofzer, "The Beginnings of Choral Polyphony," Papers of the American Musicological Society 1940 (publ. 1946), and in revised form: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 176-189. Cf. also H. Bes- seler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon (Leipzig, 1950), 180-183.

49 Cf. Bukofzer, loc. cit., 185. Besseler (loc. cit., 184-5) established that Dufay changed the originally instrumental tenor of his fauxbourdon style to a vocal part. He sees in this "Sing-Fauxbourdon " one of several predecessors of Netherlands choir music.

50 See Besseler (op. cit., 187) for literary testimony in support of vocal rendi- tion of polyphonic music in the second half of the 15th century. 51 For the discant-tenor lied of the generation of Binchois with a filling part (contratenor) added later, see Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931), 195-6.


each part shows clearly vocal intent. By that time fauxbourdon has matured to falso bordone, the Italian four part version of a homo-

phonic, syllabic style of choral singing. It is when the several voices of a composition join into one body of harmony that choral mass effects become possible. This is the meaning of the steady increase in number of singers symptomatically demonstrated in the growing size of the Papal Choir in Rome and that of the cathedral in Antwerp, a growth that coincides with the evolution of a harmonic concept.

From 1430 on we observe a constant increase in the number of voices of composition. Fauxbourdon is set for three voices, falso bordone for four,52 and this is also the norm for Josquin and his generation; by the time of Gombert (1490-1556) composition for five parts prevails. The use of a double choir in Italy before and after Willaert presupposes two choirs of four parts joining at final or otherwise emphasized points in an eight part climax.53 From here the development goes on to compositions for three and four choirs for 12 and 16 voices manipulated with consummate skill by such Venetian composers as Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586) and his nephew Giovanni (1557-1612). This line extends on the one hand to the German Baroque and to Heinrich Schiitz, who studied with Gio- vanni Gabrieli in Venice, on the other hand to the Roman Baroque, to Vincenzo Ugolini and his pupil Orazio Benevoli (1602-72), who is the uncontested master of the four choir combination.5

Ever since the first experiments with a consciously harmonic style of singing were made musicians and listeners had become increasingly fascinated by the sheer magic of harmony. The steady addition of voices used to duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate triadic harmony, the continuous expansion of the harmonic range until it included the triads on all twelve tones-this was reached by 1555-the further experimentation with quarter-tone harmony (Vicentino), the constant enlargement of the vocal and instrumental apparatus,55 point to a state of growing intoxication with the

52 We establish here merely the prevailing norm. In each period a minority of works can be found written for a number of voices greater than the "normal" amount. For a splendid early example of a six-part falso bordone, see Bukofzer (loc. cit., 186).

53 Cf. Giovanni d'Alessi, " Precursors of Adriano Willaert in the Practice of Coro Spezzato," Journal of the American Musicological Society (1952), 187.

54 See Father Laurence Feininger's recent edition of 3 Masses for 16 voices, one psalm for 16 and another for 24 parts in the Monumenta Liturgiae Polychoralis... (Rome, 1950-51).

55 Orlando di Lasso's Kapelle in Munich comprised at its highest point 73 per- sons. This number includes singers, instrumentalists (" Posauner" and "geiger "), organists, and choirboys.


power of sound, the multicolored brilliance of modulatory harmony, the emotional effects of major and minor, consonance and dissonance, high and low registers, the play of contrasts between several choirs, between vocal and instrumental choirs, and the play with echo effects.

The same attitude toward sound is reflected in the introduction of solo stops into the Renaissance organ. " It was these new organ stops that gave the organ the quality which today seems to be its distinctive feature: the contrast and mixture of different timbres . . . [this] was a new discovery of the sixteenth century." 56

The Renaissance composer's relationship to the phenomenon of dissonance was determined by his desire to base polyphony on triadic harmony as its. main foundation. The relegation of dissonance to unaccented beats as a passing note, and its toleration on the ac- cented beat only when tied over from an unaccented beat follows logically from this position.57 The use of dissonance was gradually liberalized through the composers' increasing preoccupation with the expression of passionate texts in music, while there was greater liberty almost from the beginning in the keyboard music of the Renaissance.58

Finally, as the new practice of choral singing resulted in the emergence of the folio choir book,59 so simultaneous conception of music produced a new mode of notation. The invention of the musical score, a form of notating the different parts of a composition in ver- tical order so as to make their simultaneous character and interplay visible, has been attributed by the German theorist Lampadius to the generation of Isaac and Josquin, which came to the fore around 1480.60

Harmonic simultaneity had its home in Italy, polyphonic simultaneity originated in the North. The new harmonic language of the South was cultivated in the secular forms of the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the frottola, villanesca, madrigal, balletto, and in the spiritual, but non-liturgical lauda sung in the vernacular; the new polyphonic language of the North was developed in the church music of Okeghem, Josquin des Prez, Gombert, and their contem-

56 C. Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), 305. See also E. E. Lowinsky, "English Organ Music of the Renaissance," Part II, The Musical Quarterly (Oct., 1953), esp. 532-36, 542-45.

57 This is also Besseler's point of view. Cf. Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, 224. Cf. also K. Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina, 2d Eng. ed., 1946.

58 Cf. my study on "English Organ Music," Part I, loc. cit. (1953), 383-5. 59 Cf. Bukofzer, loc. cit., and Besseler, Bourdon (156-7). 60 E. E. Lowinsky, " On the Use of Scores by Sixteenth Century Musicians," in

Journal of the American Musicological Society I (1948).


poraries. The sixteenth century saw a process of interpenetration between the harmonious euphony of the South and the contrapuntal dynamism of the North which found its culmination in the Italian madrigal and the Netherlands motet. The Italian madrigal absorbed Northern polyphony, whereas the Netherlands motet opened itself more and more to the expressive energies of the Italian madrigal and its novel harmonic and tone painting devices. The whole century can be viewed in terms of this struggle of artistic principles, a struggle in which leadership slowly changed from the North to the South.

The first great synthesis took place in the work of Josquin des Prez, recognized by his own, and remembered by many succeeding generations, as the outstanding musical genius of his age, in whose work can be found the seeds of the bountiful and diversified harvest of the new ideas, forms and techniques of Cinquecento music. A dual embodiment of this open meeting of North and South and its climax may be seen in the twin stars of Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) and Pierluigi da Palestrina (1526-1594). Lasso, the Netherlander, received his musical education for the most part in Italy; his beginnings as a composer were under the predominating influence of the Italians. Palestrina, the Italian, grew up in the shadow of the Papal Choir in Rome, which, although international in its selection of singers, was dominated artistically by the Netherlanders; he started out stylistically almost as a Netherlands composer. Both artists were moving in opposite directions toward the same goal of synthesis. They reached it in very different ways.

Perhaps the strangest fruit of the encounter between Flanders and Italy was the secret chromatic art in the Netherlands motet described in this writer's book of the same title.61 An outgrowth of musica ficta-the system of rules by which singers were taught when to flatten or sharpen certain notes in certain melodic and harmonic situations-the secret chromatic art extended this technique systematically to a whole chain of notes in the circle of fifths. The result of such an extension of musica ficta was a bold and novel technique of modulation which made for a reading not only of deeper expression, but also of greater musical logic and coherence in the sense in which the sixteenth century preached and practiced musical coherence. The chromatic modulations, not written down but implied, fall with great regularity on text passages of intense emotion. An analysis of the texts and of the social background of the music and musicians led to the thesis that we have here an expression of crypto-

61 Op. cit. note 43 above.


Reformed artists living in those same Netherlands which, twenty years later, were the scene of a violent religious war. The secret chromatic art led me to investigate the basic ambiguity in the philo- sophical, literary and artistic expression of the epoch in a chapter on the meaning of double meaning in the sixteenth century.62

The antithesis between the magic of rich and variegated sound and the severity of linear counterpoint was experienced in its fullness for the first time by the musicians of the Renaissance. It has not left the European scene since. The struggle between these two atti- tudes characterized the evolution of Baroque polyphony, it found a balance in the late polyphony of the three Viennese classical masters, it broke out afresh in the contrast between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If the love for sensuous sound and the delight in linear counterpoint may be regarded as the material and the spiritual faces of music, then it may be said that Renaissance and Baroque developed both the body and the spirit of music to its fullest, that the Viennese masters-but especially Mozart-created the most singular integration of the two in their late works, whereas the nineteenth century emphasized the material and the twentieth the intellectual side of music. It need not be stressed that this constitutes a rough appraisal from one point of view only.

IV

It is difficult to imagine that the musician of the Renaissance would break out from the safety of the formes fixes and the cantus firmus technique into a freedom of musical expression in which all guidance and direction was lacking. The question arises: what took the place of cantus firmus and formal schemes? In answering it we come to another fundamental innovation of Renaissance music. It concerns the relation between music and text. How complete that reversal was may be illustrated by two statements. The first presents the attitude of the medieval motet composer. Magister Aegidius of Murino, who speaks for the fourteenth century, after having duly described the successive process of composition writes:

Postquam cantus est factus et ordi- natus, tune accipe verba que debent

After the composition is finished, take the words of the motet and

62 Cf. Secret Chromatic Art, 135-175. It is only fair to state that my book was received with high praise and with vehement criticism at the time of its publication. It is a source of satisfaction that such great experts in 15th and 16th century music as Charles van den Borren and the late Alfred Einstein accepted my findings without reservation. Since then I have collected much additional and supporting material which I hope to submit in systematic form before long.


esse in moteto et divide ea in quatuor partes; et sic divide cantum in quatuor partes; et prima pars verbo- rum compone super primam partem cantus, sic ut melius potest, et sic procede in finem; et aliquando est necesse extendere multas notas super pauca verba . . . quousque perven- iant 63 ad complementum.64

divide them into four sections. Then divide the music into four sections too, and set the first part of the text to the first part of the music as best you can and thus proceed to the end. And sometimes it is necessary to extend many notes over few words . . . until they are all used up.

In this wonderful formula music is the Procrustean bed into which the text has to fit itself as best it can. Admittedly, this is an extreme procedure even in medieval practice. Yet it is characteristic of the prevailing lack of consonance between music and text. For the loose connection between word and tone in the music of the Middle Ages cannot be denied. Even Guillaume de Machaut, composer and poet, did not concern himself with bringing about a cor- respondence between the rhythmic groupings of his composition and the groups of verses in his poem. It is not unusual for the music of a medieval virelai or ballata to tear apart the different stanzas of a poem. Even to separate the syllables of a single word is common enough. To be sure, in the polyphonic conductus of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we meet at times with syllabic declamation of the same text simultaneously enunciated in all voices. But never do we find consistent application of short notes to short syllables and vice versa. Besides, secular music in the Middle Ages uses identical music for changing text, it did not aspire to express it, except in a very general way.

Here the Renaissance caused a veritable revolution. The new relationship between word and tone was stated by no one more clearly than by Zarlino, the illustrious theorist of Venice, devoted disciple of Willaert. In his Istituzioni harmoniche of 1558 (book IV, ch. 32) he refers significantly to Plato's definition of music which distinguishes between text, harmony, and rhythm, and he writes:

... pari che in tal compositione 'una di queste cose non sia prima dell'al- tra; tuttavia avanti le altre parti pone La Oratione, come cosa prin- cipale; et le altre due parti, come

... it may seem as if in such a composition all elements were of equal weight; however, he (Plato) puts the text as the principal element ahead of the others; and the two re-

63 Orig.: pervenientur. 64Coussemaker, Scriptores de musica, III, 125. Cf. Heinrich Besseler, Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters, Archiv fur Musikwissen- schaft VIII (1926), 200; see also Marius Schneider, Die Ars Nova des XIV. Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und Italien (Wolfenbiittel, 1930), 40.


quelle, che serveno a lei: Percioche dopo che ha manifestato il tutto col mezo delle parti dice, che l'Harmonia, & il Numero debbeno seguitare la Oratione, & non la Oratione il Nu- mero, ne l'Harmonia. Et cio e il dovere.

maining parts are subservient to it: for after he has revealed the whole by means of the parts he says that harmony and rhythm must follow the text and not vice versa. And this is as it should be.

Then referring to Horace's warning in his Ars poetica: Versibus exponi Tragicis res Comica non vult, Zarlino continues:

... si come non e lecito tra i Poeti comporre una Comedia con versi Tragici; cost non sara lecito al Musico di accompagnare queste due cose, cioe l'Harmonia, et le Parole insieme, fu- ori di proposito. Non sara adunque conveniente, che in una materia allegra usiamo l'Harmonia mesta, & i Numeri gravi; ne dove si tratta ma- terie funebri, et piene di lagrime, e lecito usare un'Harmonia allegra, & Numeri leggieri, o veloci ...

As poets are not supposed to compose a comedy in tragic verse so musicians are not supposed to com- bine harmony and text in an unsuit- able manner. Therefore it would not be fitting to use a sad harmony and a slow rhythm with a gay text or a gay harmony and quick and light- footed rhythms to a tragic matter full of tears.

Zarlino becomes more specific and advises the composer

... di accompagnare in tal maniera ogni parola, che dove ella dinoti as- prezza, durezza, crudelta, amaritu- dine, & altre cose simili, l'harmonia sia simile a lei, cioe alquanto dura, & aspra; di maniera pero, che non offendi. Simigliantemente quando alcuna delle parole dimonstrara pianto, dolore, cordoglio, sospiri, lagrime, & altre cose simili; che l'harmonia sia piena di mestitia.

to set each word to music in such a way that where it denotes harshness, hardness, cruelty, bitterness and other similar things the music be similar to it, that is somewhat hard and harsh, however, without offend- ing. Similarly, when one of the words expresses weeping, pain, heart- break, sighs, tears and other similar things, let the harmony be full of sadness.

And now Zarlino actually defines sad harmony as one which combines slow movement with the use of syncopated dissonances and minor chords, whereas gay harmony prefers major chords in light and fast rhythms. We have here nothing less than the foundation of a theory of tonal expression that determined in principle the music from the sixteenth century onward, though musical means, forms, and techniques changed vastly.

In his theory of the relation between word and tone Zarlino stresses in particular the new theory of text declamation:


... ma etiandio dovemo osservare, di accommodare in tal maniera le parole della Oratione alle figure cantabili, con tali Numeri, che non si oda alcun Barbarismo; si come quando si fa proferire nel canto una sillaba longa che si doverebbe far proferir breve: per il contrario una breve, che si doverebbe far proferir longa; come in infinite cantilene si ode ogni giorno; il che veramente e cosa ver- gognosa.

but we must also observe to set the words of the text in such manner to the notes, and in such rhythms, that no barbarism be heard, such as happens when a long syllable is set to a short note or a short syllable to a long note, as one hears nowadays in infinite compositions, a truly shameful thing.

And finally Zarlino proceeds to criticize what no medieval musician would ever have dared to criticize: the sacred tradition of the Gregorian Chant, on the ground of its faulty and barbaric declamation of the text where we hear instead of Dominus, Angelus, Filius: Dominus, Angelus, Filius. Zarlino goes further and demands an actual revision of the chant based on the humanistic principles of text declamation. In recommending such a revision he writes:

... il che sarebbe cosa molto lodevole, et tanto facile da corregere, che mut- andoli poco poco, si accommodarebbe la cantilena; ne per questo mutarebbe la sua prima forma: essendo che con- siste solamente nella Legatura di molte figure, o note, che si pongono sotto le dette sillabe brevi, che senza alcun proposito le fanno lunghe; quando sarebbe sofficiente una sola figura.

... it would be a very praiseworthy thing and the correction would be so easy to make that one could accommodate the chant by gradual changes; and through this it would not lose its original form, since it is only through the binding together of many notes put under short syllables that they become long without any good purpose when it would be sufficient to give one note only.

Zarlino lived to see this suggestion for reform incorporated in the brief of Gregory XIII of 1577 through which Palestrina and Zoilo, both members of the Papal Choir, were charged with revising the Gregorian Chant.65 Nothing illustrates better the change in aesthe- tic feeling than the imposition of Renaissance principles on the Plain

65Strangely enough, the great historian of this reform of the Chant, though quoting Zarlino at length, writes: "Doch warum aussert weder er [Zarlino] noch Vanneo noch Lago, die in dieser Hinsicht mit ihm iibereinstimmen, einen Tadel gegen den Choral, dessen Melodien ihnen doch bekannt waren?" Molitor quotes from chapter 33 of Book 4, Zarlino's criticism of the chant occurs in chapter 32 of the same book. P. Raphael Molitor, Die Nach-Tridentinische Choral-Reform zu Rom (Leipzig, 1901), I, 133.


Chant which was held by medieval writers to have been dictated to Pope Gregory I by the Holy Ghost. In old miniatures the Pope can be seen writing in the presence of the white dove which presumably inspires the melodies he puts on paper.

We have quoted Zarlino at length, and not without reason. For we are here at the very core of the new musical concept of the Renaissance. In giving up the security and guiding power accorded by the cantus firmus technique and the preexisting patterns, the Renaissance composer adopts the human word as his new guide. The text becomes now the principal source of musical inspiration. The composer regards it as his most noble task to express in tones the meaning of the text and its pictorial and emotional content. The madrigalist of the sixteenth century broke with the old custom of setting different verses to the same music; he accompanies each stanza with the music appropriate to it. The modern relationship between music and text as we know it in all dramatic music has its origin in the new attitude of the Renaissance composer. The con- sequences that flow forth from this new principle are innumerable: musical rhythm is now shaped by the rhythm of the word; clear declamation of the text becomes a universal demand; to the degree that the composer is absorbed in the desire to translate the text into music he loses interest in contrapuntal abstractions and becomes pre- occupied with questions of harmonic color, dissonance, rhythm. In his quest for expression the musician of the Renaissance created entirely new tonal phenomena: 66 he expanded the medieval tonal space of not quite three octaves to almost five octaves; he discovered and exploited for the first time the bass region; consistent with the expansion of the tonal space string and wind instruments were made, instead of in families of three, in families, of 4, 5, 6, 7, and even 8 different ranges; the bass range of keyboard instruments was extended and chromatic trumpets 67 and the trombone 68 were created to facilitate instrumental performance of the newly added bass region. In imitation of the ancient Greek chromatic genus the Renaissance musician introduced and utilized systematically the half tone steps of the chromatic scale; he discovered new harmonic con- tinents. It is of symbolic significance that in the same year 1519

o6 See for the following: E. E. Lowinsky, "The Concept of Physical and Musi- cal Space in the Renaissance," Papers of the American Musicological Society (An- nual meeting, 1941), 57-84.

67 Cf. Curt Sachs, "Chromatic Trumpets in the Renaissance," The Musical Quarterly (1950), 62-66. 68 Cf. H. Besseler's admirable study "Die Entstehung der Posaune," Acta Musicologica (1950), 8-35.


in which Magellan started his circumnavigation of the globe, Adri- anus Willaert, later choir-master of San Marco in Venice, for the first time in the history of music navigated, as it were, around the whole tonal space by going step by step through the circle of fifths until he reached after 12 steps the point of departure. To exploit these new harmonic routes the Pythagorean tuning system preserved throughout the Middle Ages had to be given up and it was in the Renaissance that the first attempts at a well-tempered tuning system were made. The conquest of these novel means of chromaticism and modulation provided the musician with a wealth of new expressive shadings in harmonic color and melodic inflection that were to be exploited throughout the sixteenth century, especially in the rich literature of the Italian madrigal which, strangely enough, glorified not modern poetry in the first place but Petrarch, the trecentist, "the first modern poet, able to give expression to the most intimate, the most delicate, and the most sublime impulses of his soul, the first to put in perfect form the discordance of his own feelings." 69

While the Italians excelled in the development of a refined harmonic and chromatic style surcharged with emotion, created to reflect the tensions, desires, and frustrations of the human soul, it was a Frenchman, Clement Janequin, who held up, as it were, an acoustical mirror to the world to catch and to render musical what was audible in it. Thus he composed the bird concerts, Le chant des oiseaux, Le rossignol, L'alouette; he created the vast battle scenes of La bataille de Marignan, La prinse et reduction de Boulogne, hunt- scenes in La chasse au cerf, street scenes of Paris with the characteristic calls of the vendors in Les cries de Paris, and the delightful gossip of women in Le caquet des femmes. Each one of these program chansons gave rise to a whole literature of works in the same vein.

Unbelievable though it may seem, Janequin took his battle music with its drum rolls, trumpet calls, and its artillery cannonades and used it as a model for a Mass.70 This was in accordance with another innovation of musical technique in the Renaissance: the cantus firmus as a basis for a Mass was replaced by a complete composition with all voices, sacred or secular. By stretching, repeating, and vary- ing it the composer extended it to the length necessary for the text of

69 Cf. A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, I, 190. 70 La Bataille de Marignan is available in Henri Expert's Maitres Musiciens de

la Renaissance Francaise (Paris, 1894-1908), vol. 7, and in Hans Engel's Das mehrstimmige Lied des 16. Jahrhunderts in the recent series Das Musikwerk (Cologne, no date); the Mass La Bataille has been edited by Henry Expert in the Anthologie Chorale (Paris, 1947).


the Mass. Obviously, the Renaissance composer must have felt bored by the task of setting the invariable text of the Ordinary of the Mass to music. And so he helped himself by using music set to more interesting texts. This procedure known as parody technique seems to indicate that the religious experience embodied in the Mass was no longer strong enough to compensate for the lack of drama and variety in its text. Thus it is that the chief attention of the composer shifts from the Mass in the fifteenth to the motet in the sixteenth century. The texts of the motets change according to the time of the day and the season, and in their selection the composer had a vast choice between the books of the Old Testament, those of the New Testament, and later texts in Latin prose or poetry, both spiritual and secular. As was mentioned before, the composer gradually gave up the cantus firmus technique in motet composition too, and instead strove for a polyphonic organism in which all parts were singable, alike in rhythm, thematic material, and in their adaptability to the text. The rise of the fugal technique of composition gave great momentum to the development of instrumental music.

One can view the evolution of vocal music in the Renaissance as one great process of emancipation: emancipation from the Gregorian chant, from the cantus firmus, from the technique of successive composition, from preexistent patterns of form and rhythm. Similarly, one can interpret the evolution of instrumental music in the Renaissance as a slow process of emancipation from the domination of vocal music.71 Throughout the Renaissance, instruments were called upon to reinforce the parts sung by the choir; they substituted for missing voices; they accompanied the solo voice; they alternated with the choir in the performance of the Mass, the Te Deum, the Magnificat, and the hymn. Dance music, though enjoying a certain measure of independence, borrowed not infrequently from secular art melodies or from folk-song. But vocal pieces constituted the chief repertory of purely instrumental ensembles and of the keyboard player or the lute virtuoso. Just as the beginnings of independent thought on the part of the medieval theologian and philosopher are to be found in the commentaries on the accepted authorities of the Bible, the Sentences and Aristotle, so we find the beginnings of an independent instrumental style in the "commentaries" on vocal models, the contrapuntal elaborations, the ornamentations and the variations on liturgical and secular tunes. In fact, the Spanish called these variations glosas, i.e., commentaries. True, the organist

71Cf. Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), 297-8.


was entirely free in those small improvisatory pieces called prelude, preambulum, prooemium, toccata, intonazione, used originally, as the last name suggests, to sound the pitch for the choir in a manner both effective and artful. But it was only when the new fugal style of the motet emerged that a technique was found that enabled the composer of instrumental music to evolve what we call "absolute music," an autonomous musical structure performed by instruments independent of voice, word, and other external relationships. These new forms received various names: canzona, ricercar, fantasia, and they all contributed to the evolution of one of the most condensed, unified, logical and dynamic structures that music knows: the fugue. At the end of the sixteenth century when vocal music abandons contrapuntal construction, counterpoint has found a new home in instrumental music. Ultimately, the rise of the motivic and fugal technique of composition forms the origin of the idea of thematic work on which all instrumental music has been based ever since.

Harmonic and polyphonic simultaneous conception as evolved by the Renaissance musician have brought about a complete change in the process of composition. Even where, in later periods, use is made of cantus firmus, its meaning and technique have changed fundamentally. After the arrival of a harmonic conception the medieval procedure of successive composition of voices was gone. When Bach in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion introduced the cantus firmus of the chorale sung by the bright voices of the boys above the dramatic dialogue of two choruses, accompanied by two orchestras and continuo, he did not return to the successive manner of composition; the cantus firmus was no longer the point of departure for the successive alignment of parts, it had a merely modifying influence on the conception of a gigantic whole governed by overall dramatic, symbolic, harmonic, and contrapuntal considerations.

The two principal ideas from which music has since the sixteenth century drawn its inspiration, music as expression, as painting in tones, and music as structure based on thematic work, both originated in the Renaissance. In a work like Bach's St. Matthew Passion the two streams flow together into one mighty river. Aside from such rare moments of synthesis, different nations took different roads in a surprisingly logical manner. Italy, which pioneered the idea of music as expression, created the most passionate form of music, the music drama. France, which specialized early in tone painting, created an almost pictorial style of instrumental music that extends from the French lutenists and the clavecin music of Couperin and Rameau to the suggestive atmospheric tone poems of Debussy. The


Germanic North, which is responsible for the emergence of fugal polyphony, created the greatest autonomous structures of music and led in the composition of the fugue, sonata, quartet, and symphony.

V

From the vantage-point of the criteria elaborated we can now look back at the Ars Nova of the fourteenth century to examine briefly its position. The theorists of the Ars Nova emphasize more than anything else the revolution in the conception and notation of rhythm. Heretofore the composer could draw only on the simple patterns of five rhythmic modes, all in ternary meter. Now not only was duple meter admitted, but a notation of rhythm was introduced based on the principle of the repeated mathematical multiplication of 2 or of 3 by itself. This simple yet ingenious mathematical mensuration of rhythm, the basis of the notation of rhythm ever since, was described for the first time by a mathematician, Johannes de Muris, of the University of Paris, in his treatise Ars novae musicae of 1319. We must remember that music was part of the quadrivium and that a number of prominent theorists of music of the Middle Ages were mathematicians. It is interesting to observe that the theory of the continued multiplication of integers and fractional numbers by themselves found its first systematic expression in the treatise Algorismus proportionum of the greatest French mathematician of the fourteenth century, Nicholas of Oresme (c. 1323- 1382), whom Moritz Cantor 72 calls in fact "Erfinder der Potenz- grossen mit gebrochenen Exponenten," the inventor of power development with fractional exponents. The fact that Johannes de Muris evolved his notational method before Nicholas of Oresme presented a consistently elaborated theory and mathematical notation of power development suggests that this topic had occupied French mathematicians for some time. Nicholas of Oresme was probably the man who summarized and brought to a conclusion the mathematical thought of a whole generation. Thus it was the mathematicians who opened the way and created the notational means for the whole vast development of rhythmic and poly-rythmic figu- rations in Western music.

72 Geschichte der Mathematik, 4 vols. (1890-1908), II, 121. This is confirmed by Johannes Tropfke, Geschichte der Elementar-Mathematik, 6 vols. (Berlin & Leipzig, 1921), II, 125. The latter gives also a detailed account of the beginnings of power development in Greek, Indian, and Arabian sources (ibid., 104-108). It is interesting that power development in Greek mathematics was so tied to geome- try and the constructions of a square and a cube that it did not exceed the third power, whereas the mensural notation of the Ars Nova required working with the fourth power.


The invention of a rhythmical notation strictly proportionally mensurable allowed suddenly a whole array of smaller note values and an entirely unprecedented variety and contrast of rhythmic figures. As if bewildered and frightened by the onrush of so many novel rhythmic possibilities, the musician of the Ars Nova immedia- tely imposed severe restrictions on them. He subjected the whole structure of a composition, especially the larger ones, to a strict scheme of periodization known under the modern name of isorhythm and under the old Latin term of talea. An entirely arbitrary sequence of rhythms would return again and again throughout the composition. Although an unsuspected richness of rhythmic motions was made possible, the medieval idea of the rhythmic pattern was only expanded, not abandoned. Not before the first third of the fifteenth century was isorhythmic organization slowly replaced by entirely free rhythmic invention.

The process of polyphonic composition was, in general, the successive one. This is quite clear in the case of the Ars Nova motet. First the cantus firmus taken from the Gregorian Chant was laid out in the lowest voice in slow motion; next came the somewhat more lively middle voice (motetus), and last the fast moving upper voice (triplum). All voices were subjected to the intellectual discipline of isorhythmic procedure. The differentiation and isolation of one voice from the other clarified by the rhythmic gradation is completed by the provision of a special text for each voice. In time the upper voices received even texts in the French vernacular, while the cantus firmus remained in Latin as if to lend a modicum of decorum to the invasion of the liturgical sphere by strong secular forces. Thus Guillaume de Machaut wrote a motet in which the cantus firmus carries the Latin text Et gaudebit cor vestrum 73 while the two upper voices describe the joyous rewards of faithful love in French verses. In such a work the relation between cantus firmus and the other voices is reversed. Originally, the cantus firmus with its liturgical text and melody formed the spiritual center of the composition, the other voices commented on it. Now the other voices tell the actual story, which is of secular origin, and the cantus firmus comments on it with a well-chosen motto of biblical or post-biblical origin.

The Ars Nova made certain beginnings in simultaneous conception with the creation of new forms. The canon found its first systematic exploitation in the fourteenth century. The Italian Trecento canon (caccia) is limited to two voices, accompanied by a free instrumental lower voice, the French canon (chace) has three

73 Guillaume de Machaut, Musikalische Werke, ed. by F. Ludwig, III, 25; also available in Historical Anthology of Music, etc., no. 44.


parts, all of them canonic.74 Obviously, one cannot compose a canon by successive projection of voices, but only by relating the canon voice constantly to the first voice. In other words, the canon constitutes strict imitation and thus the beginning of the polyphonic technique of simultaneous conception. When simultaneous polyphonic composition was taken up by the Netherlanders we find again the use of the canon as a principal means of construction. The Netherlanders perfected the art of canonic writing. They developed canons for two, three, and four voices. They cultivated the double canon where two pairs of voices were canonically written. They used mensuration canons in which two voices start simultaneously and sing the same melody, but in rhythms of a different proportion. Canonic writing was the cradle of simultaneous polyphonic conception.

Another form much in use by the composers of the Ars Nova is the hoquetus, in which each voice is led in short tone groups that are constantly interrupted by pauses filled in by the other voices. Series of syncopations in small note values are frequently results of this technique. Evidently, in the hoquetus too there is a certain simultaneity at work in the projection of the single voices. It is a type of simultaneous rhythmic planning.

That the beginnings of simultaneous planning extended even to "harmony" may be deduced from the spectacular use of musica falsa in the Ars Nova. The term, like the later term musica ficta, refers to the introduction of chromatic notes into modal music. The rules evolved by which singers were taught to apply chromatic alter- ations not specified in the notation, were based chiefly on considerations of consonance. This proves the growing awareness of and sensitivity to the harmonic effect on the part of the Trecento composer. Moreover, thirds and sixths, heretofore considered dissonances for mathematical reasons, were now being used prominently in the new sound texture. A realistic Englishman, Walter Odington (c. 1300) went even so far as to justify the major and minor third as consonances even though they cannot be so reckoned on mathematical grounds.75

The canon, as used in the French chace and the Italian caccia, was originally based on poems depicting a hunt, which explains the origin of the terms chace, caccia, and, in English, catch. Not only

74 Cf. Nino Pirrotta, " Per l'origine e la storia della ' caccia' e del ' madrigale' trecentesco," Rivista Musicale Italiana 48 (1946), 305-323. Pirrotta quite reason- ably concludes from the fact that the French chace has three voices the priority of the simpler Italian caccia.

75 Coussemaker, Scriptores De Musica Medii Aevi, I, 199.


was the canon technique a perfect symbol of the hunter chasing his

prey; the small note values introduced through the Ars Nova as well as the hoquetus afforded splendid means to illustrate the excitement of the hunt. A gradual transfer of symbolism changed the hunt to the pursuit of lovers, to flight and pursuit in battle, and to all kinds of worldly scenes involving motion and excitement. Composers of the Trecento were also the first to conceive the idea of polyphonic bird concerts76 in which not only the music but also the text was designed to imitate bird calls by the invention of onomatopoetic syllables. This practice of imitating nature's sounds with tones as well as with specifically invented syllables reappeared on an en-

larged scale in Janequin's program chansons. It is a matter of speculation to what degree the technical innovations of the Ars Nova

sprang from the desire to create musical means for a naturalistic representation of reality. The process itself cannot be denied and constitutes evidence that the Ars Nova created not only new musical techniques but a new idea of symbolism and naturalism. This is another Renaissance element in the Ars Nova which carried in it the seeds of untold future possibilities.

It is clear from these brief comments that the Ars Nova takes a position midway between medieval and Renaissance principles of composition not unlike the place that Giotto holds in the art of painting. He combines a new feeling for nature and for movement with a new sense of space, without as yet achieving either the conception of perspective or the closeness of the imitation of nature that is the mark of the High Renaissance.

Historical movements rarely develop in a straightforward direction; they are full of retrograde motions that point more to a spiral form of evolution in which the upward curve is followed by one downward. In the Ars Nova proper we have an upward curve followed by a strong relaxation after the death of Machaut (1377), a new upward curve (in the sense of the musical Renaissance defined before) sets in with Dufay around 1430, again with Josquin des Prez around 1480, then with the Italian madrigal and Willaert around 1530, while the culminating point is reached around 1580 with the work of such composers as Lasso, Palestrina, Andrea Gabrieli, Jachet Wert, and Marenzio.

76 Cf. H. Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters. . ., 141-142, ex. 94; a marvellous example is Oswald von Wolkenstein's (1377-1445) Der May modelled after a piece of the French composer J. Vaillant. It is available in Denkmdler der Tonkunst in Osterreich IX, I and in the Historical Anthology of Music by A. T. Davison and W. Apel (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), II, no. 60. See also Ch. van den Borren, La Musique pittoresque dans le manuscrit 222C22 de Strasbourg (XVe Siecle), Bericht iiber den Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress in Basel (1924), 88-105.


VI

Within the limits of the unavoidably sketchy outline presented here it has not been possible to illuminate the manifold connections between music and the general culture of the Renaissance except in an occasional side-glance. We cannot here explore the highly interesting connections between the emergence of harmonic thinking and perspective in painting, between the new word-tone relationship and the concept of decorum, concinnitas, or convenienza 77 in the art theory of the Renaissance, or the relations between the Renaissance critique of Gregorian Chant and the humanist's criticism of the Latin of the Church Fathers. There are other parallels: as the Renaissance composer broke loose from the confining grip of medieval patterns, so the Renaissance artist replaced the medieval patternbook by the sketchbook destined to hold his free inventions and observations.78 The most important point, however, is that the new attitude of the composer to the word, which is the hub of the stylistic revolution in Renaissance music, springs from the humanistic movement.79 Unlike the painter or sculptor, the musician of the Renaissance had no actual models for his art from Greek or Roman antiquity. But he had the verses of Horace and Vergil. He studied the ancient meters. He knew that Greek music had been closely patterned after the meter of the verse, that distinct recitation was all-important to the Greek musician, who abstained from melodic embellishments and preferred to set one note to each syllable of the text.

Thus the Renaissance musician made bold to resurrect and sur- pass ancient music: resurrect it by setting Horatian odes to music in faithful observation of the ancient meters, omitting vocal ornamentations, giving one tone to each syllable, surpassing it by setting them in four parts, well aware-and proud-of the fact that harmony and polyphony were "modern " innovations enriching music beyond anything the ancients ever dreamed of.

77 Cf. Erwin Panofsky, "Idea." Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der ilteren Kunsttheorie (Leipzig, 1924), 23-38: Die Renaissance. See also Panofsky's chapter on " Diirer as a Theorist of Art" in Albrecht Diirer (Princeton, 1945), esp. 276ff.

78See Ch. de Tolnay, History and Technique of Old Master Drawings (New York, 1943), ch. II.

79 This is doubted by D. P. Walker, Der musikalische Humanismus im 16. und friihen 17. Jahrhundert (1949), 55, and affirmed by my review of the study in the Musical Quarterly (1951). I should like to take this opportunity to make a slight correction. I wrote in my review: " Strangely, the essay contains no reference of" (instead of " no discussion of, only a reference to ") "the concept of musica reservata, which so clearly forms part of musical humanism." Cf. also the chapter on " Musica Reservata" in Secret Chromatic Art.


Compared to the towering contrapuntal constructions of the time the Latin odes appear naive and simple today. Music historians in general have tended to belittle their value and significance. But we cannot fail to note the impression they made on contemporary minds. Tritonius' odes published by his humanistic adviser Konrad Celtes in 1507 were reissued in that same year and again in 1532 and 1551.80 A similar technique was used for the composition of hymns;81 the simple and syllabic settings of German chorales-some of which can be found in one manuscript together with humanistic odes82- were certainly not unaffected by this new style; the French composers of the later chanson mesuree a l'antique applied precisely the same principles to French verse in a musically more sophisticated manner. Furthermore, the verses of the abandoned Dido from Vergil's Aeneid were set to music throughout the century in a free and expressive style which, however, preserved the essence of the humanistic re- quirement: faithful and sensitive declamation of the text.

If we note furthermore that such ancient goddesses as Venus 83

and Fortuna appear in sixteenth century music and that important stylistic innovations are introduced for "iconological" reasons,84 we must concede that a revision of our notions of the humanistic influence on music is in order.

In the "humanistic " compositions a conscious attempt was made "to reintegrate classical form with classical content." 85 That in the

80 R. v. Liliencron, " Die Horazischen Metren in deutschen Kompositionen des 16. Jh.," Vierteljahrsschrift fur Musikwissenschaft (1887). H. J. Moser, Geschichte der deutschen Musik (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1926), 379-398; the same: Paul Hofhaimer (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1929), 162-167 and musical appendix 112-128; H. C. Wolff, " Die geistlichen Oden des Georg Tranozius und die Odenkompositionen des Human- ismus," in Die Musikforschung, VI, 4 (1953), 300-13. 81 Some hymns appeared in Tritonius' collection. In 1533 Nicolaus Faber published the Melodiae Prudentianae et in Virgilium now available in a reprint by J. Vecchi (Bologna, 1952).

82 E. Bernoulli, Aus Liederbichern der Humanistenzeit (Leipzig, 1910); see Beilage XVI a-c.

83 See above, text to note 30. There are many other ancient gods and goddesses besides Venus and Fortuna to be found in musical compositions of the Renaissance.

84 E. E. Lowinsky, "The Goddess Fortuna in Music," The Musical Quarterly (1943). In this study it was demonstrated how the idea of mutation, the governing principle of Fortuna, was expressed by the Renaissance composer through musical "mutation," the term used at the time to signify something akin to our modern change of key or modulation.

85 This is the formula used by Erwin Panofsky to distinguish the Italian Renais- sance from the Carolingian revival on the one hand and the " proto-Renaissance" and " proto-humanism " of the 12th and 13th centuries on the other; see his article "Renaissance and Renascences," The Kenyon Review (1944), 201-236.


absence of Greek models this attempt was doomed to failure from the start is obvious. What matters is the fact that it wrought a profound and lasting change in the musical thought and practice of the Renaissance by which all subsequent epochs were inescapably affected. Greek writings on music were studied by Renaissance musicians with the same awe and reverence as the philosophers studied Plato, the sculptors ancient statues, and the architects the remaining ancient buildings. Nicola Vicentino based his treatise of 1555, in which he introduced the use of chromatic and enharmonic music with its half and even quarter tones, on the Greek use of the chromatic and enharmonic genus, and he entitled his treatise ac- cordingly L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica. Vincenzo Galilei, the great musician and theorist, father of Galileo the physi- cist, wrote a book entitled Dialogo della Musica antica e moderna. It was published in 1581. Galilei, a member of the Florentine camerata, and a much better student of Greek writers than Vicentino ever aspired to be, drew the decisive conclusions. He postulated complete abandonment of the polyphonic style in music, he scorned counterpoint and demanded that the text be set to music for one voice only, that the vocal part be entirely subservient to the recitation and dramatic expression of the text and that harmonic support be left to an instrumental accompaniment.86 In this bold and

86 It has been said that " In spite of Galilei's discovery of the hymn of Meso- medes, the first original of Greek music known at the time, the nature of Greek music was a sealed book to the Camerata, since its notation could not be deciphered" (see M. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era [New York, 1947], 7). Yet Galilei and his contemporaries knew so many writings on Greek music that the above statement cannot be upheld in this radical form. The men of the Camerata were quite aware of the monodic character of Greek music, of the intimate union between poetry and music, of the primacy of the poetic text and the subordinate role of music; they had a much clearer grasp of Greek modes, genders, and the theory of musical ethos than did preceding generations. They knew that the ancients coordinated carefully certain rhythms, modes, and genders with certain emotions. That all this had a decisive influence on the creation of dramatic monody was shown sufficiently by D. P. Walker in his study on " The Musical Humanism," The Music Review (1941-1942); German translation (Kassel-Basel, 1949). But is it correct to say that the notation of the hymns of Mesomedes " could not be deciphered"? This, indeed, is today the generally accepted view. It has apparently not been noticed by modern writers that Galilei on p. 91 of his Dialogo della Musica Antica e Moderna speaks of the famous tables of Alypios which contain the key to the Greek letter notation, that he refers to Alypios's tract (si trova particularmente in Roma nella libreria Vaticana; di che a mesi passati n'hebbi copia, con non poca difficolta), that he prints on pp. 92-95 an extensive part of the tables of Alypios with the letters for vocal and for instrumental notation and their modern equiva- lents, that he then proceeds to print the three hymns of Mesomedes without claim- ing to have discovered them himself (lequali furono trouate in Roma da un Gentil-


highly controversial treatise principles were enunciated that were to govern the music of the future: cantata, opera, oratorio. Thus the study of Greek ideas on music was used as a catalyst to bring about those radical changes in the aims and means of music that introduced a new epoch. The authority of ancient Greece was invoked to unseat the universal rule of counterpoint that had been reigning uncontested for half a millenium.

VII

We return, in conclusion, to our initial question: can the study of music make a relevant contribution to the problem so hotly de- bated among historians of culture whether or not there was a " Renaissance " and if so, what precisely it means. In spite of the considerable reluctance on the part of eminent musical scholars to use the term "Renaissance " in music, I believe that a justification for so doing may be established on the foundation of the following ten theses:

1. In the fifteenth century a reorganization of musical institutions was begun which created the material foundation for an un- surpassed flowering of music. The initial impulse came from the prosperous and music loving Netherlands and developed such force that it reached into all corners of Western, and even parts of Eastern Europe, before it was spent. The constant migration of Netherlands musicians to Italy and the interaction between Italian harmony and Northern counterpoint were essential factors in the direction of

huomo nostro Fiorentino. . .) and that he finally advises those who would like to transcribe these hymns in modern notation of the omissions and errors that, through the long passage of time and the fault of copyists, are to be found in the original notation. Galilei puts all this into the mouth of Count Bardi. Now Strozzi answers that he is overjoyed finally to have real Greek music in his hands, and that, indeed, at the first opportunity he will transcribe the hymns into modern notation. All that can be said therefore is that Galilei did not actually offer a transcription of the Greek hymns. It is impossible to say that they " could not be deciphered." Be- sides, a mere examination of the reprint of the ancient notation was sufficient to demonstrate to the readers of Galilei that these hymns were not contrapuntal, but monodic, that mostly there was only one note to a syllable of the text, that if a melisma occurred, it consisted of two, rarely of three notes, and if so, usually at the end of a line. Just those things that mattered to the humanistic musician were perfectly evident from the original Greek notation even though the actual melody was not presented in modern notes. The reason why Galilei did not transcribe the hymns himself may be sought in the imperfect form in which he found the hymns notated, but also perhaps in the indisputable fact that the Greek melodies are so far removed from the ideal of Italian 16th century melody that he must have feared to deter rather than to encourage his contemporaries to study and love Greek music. Cf. Pontus de Tyard, Le Second Solitaire (1555), 25-27, (1st ed. 1552) for a Greek notation very similar to Galilei's Segni del Lydio, 93.


musical development during the Renaissance, to which the English made an early but decisive contribution through their insistence on the consonant character of thirds and sixths in spite of mathematical evidence adduced by Puritanic Pythagoreans.

2. The outstanding characteristic of the musical innovations of the Renaissance was a movement of emancipation carried on along the whole front of creative activity: emancipation from the formes fixes, from the dominion of rhythmic modes, and later from the shackle of isorhythmic construction, emancipation, above all, from the cantus firmus and cantus prius factus principle, and emancipation, also, from the hold of Pythagorean tuning.

3. Emancipation is impossible without criticism. Zarlino's criticism of the Gregorian chant and its ensuing reform were as typical for the humanistic attitude as they would have been un- thinkable on the part of medieval composers. But this criticism was only a symptomatic manifestation of the rejection of the whole code of medieval musical aesthetics and the procedures of composition. Even where medieval techniques remained in force side by side with the new-as, e.g., with regard to cantus'firmus composition -their nature was essentially changed.

4. The emancipation from the Gregorian chant went hand in hand with the gradual emancipation from the old system of modes. The introduction of new modes, Aeolian, Ionian and their plagal companions (Aeolian is the predecessor of our minor, Ionian that of our major scale), the development of harmony, the intensive development of musica ficta, the introduction of chromaticism and of harmonic modulation, brought about a crisis in the modal system which was to lead gradually to modern tonality.

5. The most radical innovation in the process of composition in the Renaissance is the transition from a successive to a simultaneous conception of parts: in the case of simultaneous harmonic conception it is the newly acquired capacity to "think in harmonies," in the case of simultaneous polyphonic conception it is the projection of each part in connection with every other part. The result is a com- pletely unified musical organism.

6. Unprecedented was the enlargement of the tonal world: the tone space was extended in both directions, instruments were being built in lower and higher registers than ever before. The territory of remote tones in the circle of fifths, inaccessible before because of the monopoly held by Pythagorean tuning laws, was newly discovered; chromaticism was introduced, the use of quartertones was considered and tried experimentally; harmonic modulation was discovered.


7. None of this was used for its own sake. The wealth of new musical means was born from the overwhelming desire to express and paint in tones the outer world of nature and the inner reality of man. The expansion of the text repertory of the Renaissance composer corresponded to the enlargement of tonal means. "Homo sum nil humani mihi alienum puto" was a sentiment that the Renais- sance composer could utter with full justification. Thus the real heart of Renaissance music is the new relation to the word and to language. To sing the text in each part so that it can be understood and felt, so that the subject matter becomes, as it were, "visible through tones," this is the deepest motivation of the stylistic revolution in Renaissance music. Though this can still be demonstrated in much greater detail, it may be said that this is the contribution of humanism to music. It was not necessary, as has been claimed, for the Renaissance musician to know actual Greek music. It was sufficient for him to read Plato to discover that the intimate relationship with poetry was at the root of Greek musical thought and practice. But the preoccupation with chromatic and with quartertone composition, too, had its source in the Greek chromatic and enharmonic genders, while the idea of adapting different modes, rhythms, and genders to different texts was at the bottom of the Greek theory of musical ethos. This humanistic spirit, equally with the progressive " harmonization " of music, was responsible for the vocalization of polyphony and for the emergence of the new choral art.

8. The great freedom with regard to the performance of music for voices, or instruments, or a combination of both, facilitated also, for better or for worse, the development of the vocal and instrumental virtuoso. Polyphonic pieces could be sung by one voice accompanied by lute, harpsichord, or organ; they could also be played entirely by instruments. The vehicle of virtuoso exhibitionism was the art of improvising embellishments and coloraturas, an art assiduously cultivated by singers and players. The endless warnings against excess and improper application, coupled with all the instructions on how to improvise embellishments, show what sins against style and taste were committed out of the desire for individual distinction. It is safe to make two statements in this connection: the virtuoso is a Renais- sance phenomenon; the virtuoso precedes virtuoso music.

9. Though instrumental music learned to walk hand in hand with its older sister, vocal music, it was in the Renaissance that instrumental music became independent and developed a number of autonomous forms from which could develop prelude, toccata, fugue and ostinato forms. The emancipation of instrumental music was fur- thered by the vast expansion of the instrumentarium, by the tre-


mendous changes undergone by every type of instrument, and by the keen sense for timbre and color developed during the Renaissance and leading to the art of orchestration in the Baroque.

10. Whether it be improvements of old or invention of new instruments, whether it is a matter of resurrecting ancient music or of probing into unexplored tonal regions, whether it concerns new tuning systems, new modal theories, new calculations of intervals, new melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or formal designs-every musical enter- prise of the Renaissance is characterized by an endless curiosity, a firm-if at times concealed-refusal to abide by authority for authority's sake, an intrepid pioneering spirit and an inexhaustible joy in theoretical speculation, personal and literary controversy and debate, and practical experimentation.

I should like to conclude with one last illustration that shows these traits in a rare combination. Nicola Vicentino of Ferrara, in his enthusiasm for resurrecting the half and quarter tone music of the Greeks, constructed a marvelously complicated harpsichord which he named archicembalo (described in the fifth book of his treatise). This instrument had no fewer than six manuals, and a confusing multitude of strings and tones, for it divided every whole tone not into two, but into five intermediary tones. The octave thus had not 12, but 31 tones. The archicembalo became the delight of the con- noisseurs; imitations and variations of it were constructed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also became the headache of tuners. But while the artistic daring, the acoustical mathematical imagination and the technical ingenuity spent on it may be impressive, it is more surprising to hear Vicentino give among the reasons for inventing this instrument the following (book IV, ch. 29): "The inflections and intervals that all nations of the world use in their native speech do not proceed only in whole and half tones, but also in quarter tones and even smaller intervals, so that with the division of our harpsichord we can accommodate all the nations of the world." And now Vicentino mentions specifically German, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish, and Jewish music. Surely, it would not have occurred to a medieval musician to build an instrument not only to facilitate the reconstruction of Greek music but to allow the infidel Turk and the erring Jew to intone their chants as well as the orthodox Christian. Through this musical instrument Vicentino erected a symbolic bridge which stretches from ancient Greece to the new West, from the Renaissance to the era of the Enlightenment and right down to the century of the United Nations.

Queens College (Currently: The Institute for Advanced Study).

EDWARD LOWINSKY_Music in the Culture of the Renaissance

Documents

Transcript of EDWARD LOWINSKY_Music in the Culture of the Renaissance