Introduction
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ars nova, the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to Medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the contenance angloise style from Britain to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period.
The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410s or ’20s–1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450s–1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformation in the florid counterpoint of Palestrina (c. 1525–1594) and the Roman School.
Music was increasingly freed from medieval constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation. On the other hand, rules of counterpoint became more constrained, particularly with regard to treatment of dissonances. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression. Composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists. Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake.
Precursor versions of many familiar modern instruments (including the violin, guitar, lute and keyboard instruments) developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to respond to the evolution of musical ideas, and they presented new possibilities for composers and musicians to explore. Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. During the 15th century, the sound of full triads became common, and towards the end of the 16th century the system of church modes began to break down entirely, giving way to functional tonality (the system in which songs and pieces are based on musical “keys”), which would dominate Western art music for the next three centuries.
From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works and mixed vocal/instrumental works. A wide range of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, and many others.
One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the increasing reliance on the interval of the third and its inversion, the sixth (in the Middle Ages, thirds and sixths had been considered dissonances, and only perfect intervals were treated as consonances: the perfect fourth, the perfect fifth, the octave, and the unison). Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, with highly independent voices (both in vocal music and in instrumental music). The beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music – in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them to distinguish the different parts.
The main characteristics of Renaissance music are:
- Music based on modes.
- Richer texture, with four or more independent melodic parts being performed simultaneously. These interweaving melodic lines, a style called polyphony, is one of the defining features of Renaissance music.
- Blending, rather than contrasting, melodic lines in the musical texture.
- Harmony that placed a greater concern on the smooth flow of the music and its progression of chords.
As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the Early Modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprises; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular, the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school.
The invention of the printing press in 1439 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and music theory texts on a wider geographic scale and to more people. Prior to the invention of printing, written music and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, a time-consuming and expensive process. Demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria. Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area’s many churches and cathedrals allowed the training of large numbers of singers, instrumentalists, and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers, and teachers. Since the printing press made it easier to disseminate printed music, by the end of the 16th century, Italy had absorbed the northern musical influences with Venice, Rome, and other cities becoming centers of musical activity. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier. Opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece.
Principal liturgical (church-based) musical forms, which remained in use throughout the Renaissance period, were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end of the era, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular (non-religious) musical forms (such as the madrigal) for religious use. The 15th and 16th century masses had two kinds of sources that were used: monophonic (a single melody line) and polyphonic (multiple, independent melodic lines), with two main forms of elaboration, based on cantus firmus practice or, beginning some time around 1500, the new style of “pervasive imitation”, in which composers would write music in which the different voices or parts would imitate the melodic and/or rhythmic motifs performed by other voices or parts.
During the period, secular (non-religious) music had an increasing distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is lost. Secular music was music that was independent of churches. The main types were the German Lied, Italian frottola, the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, and the Spanish villancico. Other secular vocal genres included the caccia, rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée, canzonetta, villanella, villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared.
Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorders or viols and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common instrumental genres were the toccata, prelude, ricercar, and canzona. Dances played by instrumental ensembles (or sometimes sung) included the basse danse (It. bassadanza), tourdion, saltarello, pavane, galliard, allemande, courante, bransle, canarie, piva, and lavolta. Music of many genres could be arranged for a solo instrument such as the lute, vihuela, harp, or keyboard. Such arrangements were called intabulations (It. intavolatura, Ger. Intabulierung).
The above playlist contains selected works by some of the composers covered in the remainder of this chapter. The numbers that appear before the names of compositions in the text below refer to their position in the playlist. There are also separate playlists for each composer which contain all the recordings available on Spotify barring those that are arrangements for modern instruments, instrumental arrangements of pieces originally scored for voices and the like.
Composers of the Early Renaissance
Mikołaj Radomski, also called Mikołaj z Radomia and Nicholas of Radom, was an early 15th-century Polish composer. He was connected with the court of Władysław Jagiełło and wrote polyphonic music renowned for its expression of religious contemplation.
1. Magnificat
Guillaume Legrant (Guillaume Lemacherier, Le Grant) (fl. 1405–1449) was a French composer of the early Renaissance, active in Flanders, Italy, and France. He was one of the first composers in writing polyphony to distinguish between passages for solo and multiple voices on each part.
Legrant’s music is collected in Volume 11 of the Corpus mensurabilis musicae. Seven pieces survive, of which three are sacred, and the rest secular. The sacred music includes two settings of the Credo of the Mass, and one setting of the Gloria; these are the pieces in which he makes a distinction between solo and full chorus in the polyphonic parts.
All of his surviving secular works are in the form of the virelai, one of the formes fixes. Most of the composers of the period wrote in another of formes fixes, the rondeau, but Legrant seems to have preferred the virelai, which had been set widely the century before. By 1420 few composers are known to have been writing virelais, suggesting that Legrant’s compositions may predate 1420 (the virelai was to return to favor later in the 15th century, in the music of Antoine Busnois and Johannes Ockeghem).
Beltrame Feragut or Bertrand d’Avignon (c. 1385 – c. 1450) was a French composer of the early Renaissance. He was one of several French composers who worked in Italy; at Florence and Vicenza. Bertrand was either a priest or monk, since that was then a requirement to become maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral (1426–1430).
2. Excelsa civitas Vincencia
Guillaume Du Fay (5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a composer and music theorist of early Renaissance music, who is variously described as French or Franco-Flemish. Considered the leading European composer of his time, his music was widely performed and reproduced. Du Fay was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself.
Du Fay has been described as leading the first generation of European musicians who were primarily considered ‘composers’ by occupation. His erratic career took him throughout Western Europe, forming a ‘cosmopolitan style’ and an extensive oeuvre which included representatives of virtually every polyphonic genre of his time. Du Fay was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple, and synthesized it with a wide variety of other styles, including that of the famous Missa Caput, and the techniques of his younger contemporaries, Ockeghem and Busnois.
Du Fay composed in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music. None of his surviving music is specifically instrumental, although instruments were certainly used for some of his secular music, especially for the lower parts; all of his sacred music is vocal. Instruments may have been used to reinforce the voices in actual performance for almost any of his works.
3. Par droit je puis bien complaindre et gemir
4. Je me complains piteusement
5. Inclita stella maris
6. He compaignons resvelons nous
Reginaldus Libert (Reginald; also Liebert) (fl. c. 1425–1435) was a French composer of the early Renaissance. He was a minor member of the Burgundian School, a contemporary of Guillaume Dufay, and one of the first to use fauxbourdon in a mass setting.
Four compositions by Libert have been identified. Two are rondeaux, which was the popular type of French chanson at the time. Both rondeaux are for three voices with only the uppermost voice being supplied with a text (instruments were often used for the other parts, especially in the music of the Burgundians).
His most famous composition is a complete setting of the mass, for three voices, which contains some of the earliest use of fauxbourdon. An unusual feature of this mass is that it contains music not only for the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) but the Proper as well; in this regard it resembles the Missa Sancti Jacobi of Guillaume Dufay, which is often considered to be the earliest example of fauxbourdon to which the term was applied by the composer. Libert’s mass uses a plainsong source which permeates all the movements, and migrates from voice to voice. Stylistically, this mass, as well as his other compositions, fit the period around 1430. Libert also wrote a setting of the Kyrie for four voices. Both this Kyrie and the complete mass survive in the Trent Codices.
Johannes Brassart (c. 1400 – before 22 October 1455) was a composer of the early-Renaissance Burgundian school. Survival of music from this age is spotty, and many sources of music from Liège were destroyed when Charles the Bold sacked the city in 1468. Nevertheless, some of Brassart’s music has survived, including 11 motets, 8 introits, and many individual mass movements. The introits are among the earliest known polyphonic settings of this section of the Proper of the Mass.
His music is typical of the early Burgundian style, using fauxbourdon techniques (frequent 6-3 parallelism in two voices singing above the principal melody part in the tenor voice), isorhythm, and the Burgundian under-third cadence. All of his surviving music is sacred, and includes mass movements, introits, and numerous motets; one of his pieces is on a German text, and almost certainly was written during his employment with the Imperial chapel. Often he used cantus firmus techniques, and frequently wrote with the melodic part in the top voice.
The mass movements, all for three voices, most often employ the fauxbourdon style, while the motets are typically isorhythmic. Many of the motets are for four voices. One of the distinguishing features of his motet style is the frequent use of an opening duet for two high voices, after which the remaining voices join in; this was to become a hallmark of the Burgundian style. His most famous motet, O flos fragrans, is modeled on a similar work by Dufay, and the two composers may have known each other well.
7. Regina coeli
8. Ave Maria gratia plena
9. O rex Fridrice – in tuo adventu
Juan Cornago (Johannes Cornago) (c. 1400 – after 1475) was a Spanish composer of the early Renaissance.
10. Missa de la mapa mundi: Agnus Dei
Gilles Binchois (c. 1400 – 20 September 1460) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of early Renaissance music. A central figure of the Burgundian School, Binchois is renowned a melodist and miniaturist; he generally avoided large scale works, and is most admired for his shorter secular chansons. He is generally ranked below his colleague Guillaume Du Fay and the English composer John Dunstaple, but together the three were the most celebrated composers of the early European Renaissance.
Binchois’ œuvre includes 28 mass movements, 32 psalms, 28 smaller sacred works, a variety of motets, as well as 54 chansons. Most are written for three voices, although some have four. The Encyclopædia Britannica remarked that “Binchois cultivated the gently subtle rhythm, the suavely graceful melody, and the smooth treatment of dissonance of his English contemporaries”. As a melodist in particular, Binchois is often considered among the finest of the 15th century.
Most commentators agree that Binchois was not a progressive composer. The musicologist Reinhard Strohm concludes that although Binchois “earned his enormous reputation in the one genre in which he excelled as a composer […] this master of melody and courtly performer apparently does not explore the depths of the art”. He utilized a limited range of techniques, favoring older melodic styles that evoked the 12th-century amour courtois (lit. ‘courtly love‘) tradition of the troubadours and trouvères. His genre preference was also conservative, eschewing newer voguish forms—such as cyclic masses and cantus firmus masses based on secular tunes—in favor of smaller-scale works. The musicologist Anthony Pryer described him as a “supreme miniaturist”. Only a single large-scale work of his survives, the incomplete isorhythmic motet Nove cantum melodie (1481). Binchois’ progressive use of cadences is an exception: the dominant scale-degree and leading-tone are occasionally treated with a tonal approach of the later common practice period. His use of dissonance was also forward-looking and has incited much conversation; Binchois oftentimes embraced moments of dissonant part writing, even when it was “easily avoided”. Joan A. Boucher also noted that that Binchois’ wide range use of the bass voice was unique for his time.
Like Du Fay, Binchois was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple and Lionel Power, which uniquely emphasized the third and sixth intervals and often highlighted duets within larger textures. Although Binchois probably never visited England, the Philip’s court had good relations with the English, and had established both diplomatic and cultural links with their northern neighbor; his court was open to English diplomats, businessmen and musicians. The Renaissance scholar Gordon Campbell notes that Binchois was “ideally placed to absorb and reflect styles from across the channel”. The English influence was such that three settings of antiphons by Power and Dunstable, along with a motet by Standley, were long-misattributed to Binchois. Strohm cautions that this influence was not prevalent enough to consider any of Binchois’ works to be English in style or imitating an English model: “he followed his own, aural version of contenance angloise“.
Binchois is best known for his lyric-driven secular French songs, known as chansons, which were widely transmitted and imitated by fellow composers. During Binchois’ lifetime, the rondeau became the dominant chanson-type of the three formes fixes. This was reflected in Binchois’ body of work: of his 54 chansons, the vast majority (47) are rondeaux and seven are ballades. His songs are almost exclusively in triple time, save for the rondeau “Seule esgaree” in duple meter. Other stylistic tropes include the use of under-third cadences (Landini cadences), the favoring of short phrases and material repetition. Pryer explains that “these superficial repetitions serve to demonstrate Binchois’ flexibility, since it is rare for two phrases to have exactly the same rhythmic or melodic contour, and consecutive phrases rarely end on the same pitch or note-value.” His melodies value simplicity, economy of material and, outside of the codas, minimal rhythmic activity. The musicologist Hans-Otto Korth has noted a resemblance between the melodic character and simplicity of Binchois’ music and that of folk music, emphasizing it is a similarity in effect, not necessarily an influence.
The lyrics Binchois set were often by prominent French poet contemporaries, such as Charles, Duke of Orléans, Alain Chartier and Christine de Pizan. He chiefly prioritized serious courtly subjects, unlike his contemporaries who wrote spoof songs and celebratory songs for May Day and New Year’s Day; the combinative chanson “Filles a marier/Se tu t’en marias”, which cautions against marriage, is an exception. Binchois’ method of text setting was often unique from his peers; his melodies are generally independent of the poem’s rhyme scheme. Scholars note that his tendency to favor musical structure over poetic form has made their combination unpredictable in his works. This is a stark departure from the careful music-text balance of Guillaume Du Fay’s compositions.
In addition to not prioritizing poetic structure, Binchois heavily emphasized musical symmetry. The musicologist Wolfgang Rehm was the first to note that numerous Binchois songs, particularly early works, are symmetrically constructed in their length and the location of their middle cadence. Rehm also observed that in five-line rondeaux, Binchois added a sixth non-texted musical line, so that the music remained symmetrical. In works such as the rondeau “Amours et souvenir”, abba poems are offset by an abab musical passage. As such, Binchois stands out from other Renaissance composers in that “poetic form of a song cannot always be deduced correctly from the music alone”.
Most of Binchois’ sacred output is individual mass movements, alongside psalm and canticle settings (particularly magnificats) and a variety of smaller sacred works. No complete cyclic mass is extant although a few pairs of movements are known, their unification comes from overarching stylistic similarities, not specific musical material. These mass movements are based around chant; unlike his contemporaries, the chant is used in a forward-looking manner: a starting point, not a strict foundation, allowing for more creative liberty. Conversely the overall mass movement structure is relatively conservative.
It is generally assumed that considerably more of Binchois’ total sacred music survives than secular, creating a “paradoxical image” of a composer best known for the latter. Regardless, the ease at which his secular output can be analyzed—both stylistically and chronologically—does not transfer here. The various church forms are treated distinctly, often without stylistic parallels. There are also departures from Binchois’ secular characteristics: very few Burgundian cadences (octave-leap cadences), less major prolation, more selective tempus perfectum diminutum and less regular symmetry.
Counterpoint was not a priority to Binchois, who instead emphasized text declamation and musical contour. Thus his sacred output is often considered comparatively uninspired and routine. Oftentimes the work’s chant source is harmonized in a basic, “note-against-note” manner, with such harmony in the top voice, akin to the continental standard then. Homophony is his sacred texture of choice, typically in the fauxbourdon style, melodies based on the Parisian rite—a then-fashionable approach in Burgundy.
11. Amoureux suy et me vient toute joye
12. Je ne pouroye estre joyeux
13. Triste plaisir et douleureuse joie
14. Amours mercy de trespout non pooir
15. Dueil angoisseux
16. A solis ortus cardine
Johannes de Quadris (before 1410 – 1457?) was an Italian composer of the early Renaissance. He was one of the first composers of polyphony associated with the basilica of St. Mark’s in Venice, and the earliest known composer to write a polyphonic setting of the Magnificat for four voices.
His musical style is highly varied, and possibly he wrote his surviving pieces over a career of more than the twenty documented years. The motet Gaudeat ecclesia and the Magnificat are stylistically related to the music of the late Middle Ages, with a cantus firmus surrounded by texturally distinct vocal lines; the other works, with their lighter texture, are more characteristic of Italian composers writing later in the century. Clarity of the text is foremost in these works, as is liturgical utility. According to Giulio Cattin, writing in the New Grove: “Taken as a whole, his output developed in a way typical of the 15th century, from a northern late Gothic idiom to the expressive, tuneful simplicity of Italian music.”
17. Ehu Ehu domine (Lament from the Good Friday Procession and Deposition)
18. Sepulto Domino (Responsory from the Good Friday Procession and Deposition)
19. Cum autem venissent (Planctus Mariae from the Good Friday Procession and Deposition)
Conrad Paumann (c. 1410 – January 24, 1473) was a German organist, lutenist and composer of the early Renaissance. Born blind, he became one of the most talented musicians of the 15th century, and his performances created a sensation wherever he went. He is grouped among the composers known as the Colorists.
Paumann, being blind, never wrote down his music, and may have been an improvisor above all. He has been credited with inventing the system of tablature for the lute in Germany; while it cannot be proven, it seems reasonable both because of Paumann’s influence, and because of the ease with which music can be dictated using tablature.
Most of his music is instrumental, and some of it considerably virtuosic. Only one vocal composition survives, a tenorlied Wiplich figur for three voices; stylistically it is so close to the contemporary Franco-Flemish idiom that it follows that Paumann knew the music of the Franco-Flemish composers. Most likely he encountered it on his travels, for instance when he went to Milan.
His Fundamentum organisandi of 1452, an instruction manual for improvisation, was combined with the Lochamer-Liederbuch of approximately the same date; the double source is housed in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek.
John Plummer (c. 1410 – c. 1483) was an English composer who flourished during the reign of Henry VI of England. Not many of Plummer’s compositions survive. The motets Anna mater matris Christi (Anne, mother of the mother of Christ) and Tota Pulchra Es (My Love is Wholly Beautiful) are widely available and recorded. A number of Plummer’s compositions appear in the manuscript Brussels Biliothèque Royale MS 5557. During his own lifetime, knowledge and performance of his works spread at least as far as the present-day Czech Republic, where pieces such as Tota Pulchra Es were copied into the Codex Speciálník (c. 1500). These pieces are unaccompanied sacred vocal music written for use in the great royal and noble chapels of northern Europe.
20. Anna mater matris Christi
21. Tota Pulchra Es
John Hothby (Otteby, Hocby, Octobi, Ottobi, c. 1410–1487), also known by his Latinised names Johannes Ottobi or Johannes de Londonis, was an English Renaissance music theorist and composer who travelled widely in Europe and gained an international reputation for his work.
Surviving compositions include six sacred Latin works and three secular Italian songs. Exactly which works on music theory Hothby wrote is unclear and some older works may have been attributed to him and some contemporary works often given under this name may have been written by another author Johannes de Anglia. Work generally attributed to him includes La Capiopea Legale and Proportiones Secundum. Surviving work suggests that he was a traditionalist, defending the Pythagorean tuning and Guidonian pitch in the face of reforms proposed by Bartolomé Ramos de Pareja, but is chiefly notable for modifications to the pitch system to accommodate sharp and flat notes. His work was widely known in Britain and continental Europe and he may have been the most important figure in communicating musical ideas of the Contenance Angloise between England and the continent.
Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410 – 6 February 1497) was a Franco-Flemish composer and singer of early Renaissance music. Ockeghem was the most influential European composer in the period between Guillaume Du Fay and Josquin des Prez, and he was—with his colleague Antoine Busnois—the leading European composer in the second half of the 15th century. He was an important proponent of the early Franco-Flemish School.
Dating Ockeghem’s works is difficult, as there are almost no external points of reference, except of course the death of Binchois (1460) for which Ockeghem composed a motet-chanson. The Missa Caput is almost certainly an early work, since it follows on an anonymous English mass of the same title dated to the 1440s, and his late masses may include the Missa Ma maistresse and Missa Fors seulement, in view of both his innovative treatment of the cantus firmus and his increasingly homogeneous textures later in his life.
Ockeghem used the cantus firmus technique in about half of his masses; the earliest of these masses use head-motifs at the start of the individual movements, a common practice around 1440 but one that had already become archaic by around 1450. Three of his masses, Missa Ma maistresse, Missa Fors seulement, and Missa Mi-mi are based on chansons he wrote himself, and use more than one voice of the chanson, foreshadowing the parody mass techniques of the 16th century. In his remaining masses, including the Missa cuiusvis toni and Missa prolationum, no borrowed material has been found, and the works seem to have been freely composed.
Ockeghem would sometimes place borrowed material in the lowest voice, such as in the Missa Caput, one of three masses written in the mid-15th century based on that fragment of chant from the English Sarum Rite. Other characteristics of Ockeghem’s compositional technique include variation in voices’ rhythmic character so as to maintain their independence.
A strong influence on Josquin des Prez and the subsequent generation of Netherlanders, Ockeghem was famous throughout Europe for his expressive music, though he was equally renowned for his technical prowess. Two of the most famous contrapuntal achievements of the 15th century include his Missa prolationum, which consists entirely of mensuration canons, and the Missa cuiusvis toni, designed to be performed in any of the different modes, but even these technique-oriented pieces demonstrate his uniquely expressive use of vocal ranges and tonal language. Ockeghem’s use of wide-ranging and rhythmically active bass lines sets him apart from many of the other composers in the Netherlandish Schools, and may be because this was his voice range.
22. Permanent vierge, plus digne que nesune
23. Messe in D: I. Kyrie
24. Missa Mi-Mi: IV. Sanctus
25. Credo
26. Deo gratias
Petrus de Domarto (fl. c. 1445–1455) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. He was a contemporary and probable acquaintance of Ockeghem, and was the composer of at least one of the first unified mass cycles to be written in continental Europe.
Domarto’s two mass settings, the Missa Spiritus almus and a Missa sine nomine, were famous at the time. The latter of the two may have been one of the earliest cyclic masses composed on the continent, most likely in the 1440s, and imitates some features of contemporary English composers such as Leonel Power. The Missa Spiritus almus, likely dating from the 1450s, is a cantus-firmus mass, with the melody always in the tenor, but with a changing rhythmic profile as it changes mensuration throughout the piece. The procedure was evidently influential on the next generation of composers, for it was still being copied in the 1480s, and Busnois may have based one of his own masses on the same method (the Missa O crux lignum). The theorist and writer Johannes Tinctoris criticized it for exactly the features that inspired other composers.
The two surviving secular compositions by Domarto are both rondeaux, formes fixes of the type popular with the Burgundian School.
Gilles Joye (1424 or 1425 – 31 December 1483) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. A member of the Burgundian school, he was known mainly for his secular songs which were in a lyrical and graceful style.
All of Joye’s surviving music is vocal and secular, and for three voices only. Four of his works are rondeaux, in French (though the text for one rondeau is lost), and one is an Italian ballata, probably written between 1454 and 1459 when he may have been in Italy. Joye’s songs are typical of the Burgundian secular music of the period; they are melodic, clear, and lyrical in style. No sacred music is known for certain to have been written by Joye, but two anonymous masses based on the contemporary lyric O rosa bella have been attributed to Joye for stylistic reasons; in addition, the similarity of O rosa bella to the name of his favorite prostitute, Rosabelle, along with the general irreverent character evident in his life and other work, may support this hypothesis.
27. Ce qu’on fait à quatimini
Johannes Regis (French: Jehan Leroy; c. 1425 – c. 1496) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance. He was a well-known composer at the close of the 15th century, was a principal contributor to the Chigi Codex, and was secretary to Guillaume Dufay.
Although Regis was associated professionally with Guillaume Du Fay, his music is stylistically independent of Du Fay and is highly creative and technically innovative. Like his exact contemporary, Johannes Ockeghem, Regis liked to explore the low vocal register resulting in a very broad registral palette, and his music also evidences great harmonic and textural variety. Two masses, seven motets, and two secular songs, both rondeaux, by Regis have survived; some other music is mentioned by Tinctoris and other writers but is lost. One of his lost works is a Missa L’homme armé; dating from the 1450s; it is one of the earliest known masses based on this most popular of all tunes for mass composition. In addition to this lost mass, he wrote another based on the same tune, a Dum sacrum mysterium/Missa l’homme armé; this one has survived, and is a contrapuntal tour-de-force which uses up to three pre-existing melodies simultaneously in the four voices. Regis is one of the few composers known to have written more than one L’homme armé mass. Also among Regis’ music for the mass is a single movement, Patrem Vilayge.
Regis’ extended motet, Lux solemnis, Repleti sunt omnes, features a lengthy passage of call and answer bicinia dialogue between the upper two voices and the lower two voices, foreshadowing this technique that was made famous in the following generation by Josquin. Regis is one of the first composers to have written for five voices, a standard grouping in the music of the next generation (for example, in the music of Josquin des Prez). Indeed, his motets for five voices seem to have been used by the next generation, including Loyset Compère, Gaspar van Weerbeke, Josquin, and Jacob Obrecht as models for their own work.
Johannes Pullois (died 23 August 1478) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance, active in both the Low Countries and Italy. He was one of the early generation of composers to carry the Franco-Flemish polyphonic style from its home region in the Netherlands to Italy.
One complete cyclic mass has survived, a Missa sine nomine, for three voices; most likely dating from the 1450s, it is one of the earliest cyclic masses to be written on the continent. It shows such influence of English music that it has been mistaken for the work of an anonymous English composer. The mass displays a complex transmission pattern, which has confused its dating and provenance.
Pullois also wrote a motet for the Christmas season Flos de spina, which is similar stylistically to works by Ockeghem, and may have been written during his time in Italy. One other motet, Victime paschali laudes, and three sacred contrafacta of secular songs have survived. He also wrote 14 secular songs (including the three with contrafactum texts) which appear in various sources from Italy as well as Germany.
Juan de Urrede (c.1430-after 1482, Salamanca, Spain) was a Flemish singer and composer active in Spain in the service of the Duke of Alba and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He was born Johannes de Wreede in Bruges.
He composed several settings of the Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium, mostly based on the original Mozarabic melody composed by St. Thomas Aquinas. One of his compositions for four voices was widely performed in the sixteenth century, and became the basis for a number of keyboard works and masses by Spanish composers. Although he wrote sacred songs, he was better known for courtly songs.
Robert Morton (c. 1430 – after 13 March 1479) was an English composer of the early Renaissance, mostly active at the Burgundian court. He was highly regarded at the time. Only secular vocal music, all rondeaux for three voices, survive.
Given the almost complete elimination of 15th century music manuscripts in England, largely by Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, it is not surprising that most of Morton’s music survives in sources from the Continent, and if he was ever active as a musician in his native land, all trace is lost. Eight pieces survive, all rondeaux. One of the most famous of them is the earliest known setting of the tune l’homme armé, which was used by many early Renaissance composers as a cantus firmus for the Mass. This piece, a quodlibet, is probably datable to May 1464; it seems to have been written as a departure gift for another court composer, Simon le Breton.
Another of his rondeaux, Le souvenir de vous me tue, was exceedingly famous, and copies of this piece were widely disseminated in Europe. All of Morton’s surviving music is in French, not surprising since it all dates from his time in Burgundy. Melodically it is somewhat simpler than the music of his contemporaries such as Hayne or Antoine Busnois.
The music theorist and writer Johannes Tinctoris wrote glowingly of Morton, mentioning that he was “world-famous”. Even though much of his music must have been lost—including any sacred music—he seems to have been influential on other composers at the court of Burgundy, and several of his compositions were used as source material for masses by later composers, including Josquin des Prez.
28. Le souvenir de vous me tue
29. Il sera pour vous conbatu/L’homme armé
Antoine Busnois (also Busnoys; c. 1430 – before 6 November 1492) was a French composer, singer and poet of early Renaissance music. Busnois and colleague Johannes Ockeghem were the leading European composers of the second half the 15th century, and central figures of the early Franco-Flemish School. While also noted as a composer of motets and other sacred music, he was one of the most renowned 15th-century composers of secular polyphonic chansons. Between Guillaume Du Fay and Claudin de Sermisy, Busnois was the most prolific and important French composer of songs.
Busnois’ contemporary reputation was immense; he was probably the best-known musician in Europe between Guillaume Dufay and Johannes Ockeghem. From his output of sacred music wo cantus firmus Masses and eight motets have survived, while many others were most likely lost. He set the Marian antiphon Regina coeli several times. Stylistically, his music can be considered a midpoint between the simplicity and homophonic textures of Dufay and Binchois, and the soon-to-be pervasive imitative counterpoint of Josquin and Gombert. He used imitation only occasionally but skillfully, created smooth and singable melodic lines and had a strong feeling for triadic sonorities, anticipating 16th-century practice.
According to Pietro Aron, Busnois may have been the composer of the famous tune L’homme armé, one of the most widely distributed melodies of the Renaissance and the one more often used than any other as a cantus firmus in Mass composition. Whether or not he wrote the first Mass based on L’homme armé, his was by far the most influential; Obrecht’s setting, for example, closely parallels that of Busnois, and even Du Fay’s quotes from it directly. But Busnois’ polyphonic chansons (French secular songs) are the works on which his reputation mainly rests. Most are rondeaux, but some are bergerettes; many of them achieved the status of popular songs, and some were perhaps based on other popular songs which are now lost. He probably wrote the words for almost all of his chansons. Some of his tunes were recycled as cantus firmus for Masses composed more than a generation after his death, for instance Fortuna desperata (which was used both by Obrecht and Josquin), though this attribution is controversial. While most of Busnois’s secular songs are set to French words, at least two employ Italian texts and one is in Flemish. Most are for three voices, although there are a few for four.
30. Missa L’Homme armé: Kyrie
31. Noël, noël
32. Regina caeli (I)
33. Bel acueil (rondeau)
Guillaume Le Rouge (fl. 1450–1465) was a Netherlands musician of the Burgundian school. He took a position at the court of Charles d’Orleans, serving in the chapel from 1451 to 1465. One song remains of his compositions, Se je fais duel je n’en ouis mais. An adaptation of Stella celi extirpavit (a prayer for deliverance from the plague) to the melody of the song So ys emprentid (known as a contrafactum) is attributed to Le Rouge.
34. Stella celi extirpavit
Walter Frye (died 1474?). Nothing certain is known about the life of this English composer. Frye wrote masses, motets and songs, including ballades and a single rondeau. All of his surviving music is vocal, and his best-known composition is an Ave Regina, a motet which occurs, unusually, in three contemporary paintings, even including notation. Some of his shorter pieces acquired an extraordinary fame in far-away areas, such as Italy, southern Germany, Bohemia and present-day Austria, including the rondeau Tout a par moy and the ballade So ys emprentid. These songs were often copied, rearranged and plagiarized, and appear in numerous collections in varied forms. Frye’s masses, however, were his most historically significant contribution, for they influenced the music of Jacob Obrecht and Antoine Busnois. Frye’s style in his masses was typical of English music of the period, the Contenance Angloise, using full triadic sonorities, and sometimes isorhythmic techniques; he contrasted full-voiced textures with passages for only two voices, which became a characteristic sound of the polyphony of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Three masses have survived more or less complete: the Missa Flos Regalis (for four voices), Missa Nobilis et Pulchra (three voices), and the Missa Summe Trinitati (also for three voices).
35. Missa Flos Regalis: Gloria
William Horwood, also Horewud (c. 1430 – 1484) was an English polyphonic vocal composer of the early Renaissance. He is one of the earliest composers represented in the Eton Choirbook, with three complete pieces and one incomplete piece. The survival of these large-scale pieces makes Horwood the most important representative we have of the period between Dunstaple and early Tudor composers such as Fayrfax and William Cornysh. Horwood’s “Magnificat secundi toni a 5” bears a strong resemblance to compositions of his near contemporary Josquin des Prez (c. 1440–1521), so much so that he might easily be mistaken for Josquin.
36. Gaude flore virginali
Johannes Tinctoris (c. 1435 – 1511) was an early Renaissance music theorist and composer from the Low Countries. Tinctoris published many volumes of writings on music. While they are not particularly original, borrowing heavily from ancient writers, they give an impressively detailed record of the technical practices and procedures used by composers of the day. He wrote the first dictionary of musical terms (the Diffinitorium musices); a book on the characteristics of the musical modes; a treatise on proportions; and three books on counterpoint, which is particularly useful in charting the development of voice-leading and harmony in the transitional period between Du Fay and Josquin. The writings by Tinctoris were influential on composers and other music theorists for the remainder of the Renaissance.
While not much of the music of Tinctoris has survived, that which has survived shows a love for complex, smoothly flowing polyphony, as well as a liking for unusually low tessituras, occasionally descending in the bass voice to the C two octaves below middle C (showing an interesting similarity to Ockeghem in this regard). Tinctoris wrote masses, motets and a few chansons.
37. Missa sine nomine #1: Kyrie
48. Missa sine nomine # 2: Agnus Dei
Richard Hygons (also Higons, Huchons, Hugo; c. 1435 – c. 1509) was an English composer of the early Renaissance. While only two compositions of this late 15th-century composer have survived, one of them, a five-voice setting of the Salve Regina Marian antiphon, has attracted interest from musicologists because of its close relationship to music being written at the same time on the continent, as well as its high level of workmanship.
The two-voice setting of the Gaude virgo mater Christi, which appears on a single surviving leaf of a choirbook from Wells Cathedral (the enormous majority of music from the 15th century and early 16th century was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII).
The Salve Regina is unique among English music of the period in that its cantus firmus, drawn from the melisma on the word “caput” in the Sarum antiphon Venit ad Petrum, is the same as that from three earlier Caput masses by composers from elsewhere: Jacob Obrecht, Johannes Ockeghem, and an anonymous composer once thought to be Guillaume Du Fay. Recent research has suggested that this third mass was actually by an unknown Englishman working in the early 15th century, and is the original for the later three works. The Salve Regina, being based on a votive antiphon for Maundy Thursday, was probably intended for use on that day.
The difficulty, complexity, and craftsmanship shown in Hygon’s Salve Regina has suggested that the musical standards at Wells Cathedral at the end of the 15th century were high, and matched those of musical centres across the Channel.
Johannes Martini (c. 1440 – late 1497 or early 1498) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. Martini wrote Masses, motets, psalms, hymns, and some secular songs, including chansons. His style is conservative, sometimes referring back to the music of the Burgundian School, especially in the Masses. Some stylistic similarity to Obrecht suggests that the two may have known each other, or at the very least Martini may have seen Obrecht’s music. Obrecht was a guest in Ferrara in 1487, and his music is known to have circulated in Italy in the early 1480s.
Some of the earliest examples of the paraphrase Mass are by Martini. His Missa domenicalis and Missa ferialis, which have been tentatively dated to the 1470s at the earliest, use paraphrase technique in the tenor voice – the normal voice for carrying the cantus firmus – but also include the same melodic material in other voices at the start of points of imitation. The paraphrase technique was to become one of the predominant methods of mass composition in the early 16th century.
In addition to his mostly conservative output of masses, he is the first composer known to have set psalms for double choir singing antiphonally. This style, which was to become famous in Venice under the direction of Adrian Willaert seventy years later, seems to have had no influence at the time: yet it was a striking innovation. His secular music is in both French and Italian.
39. Letatus sum
40. Quare fremuerunt gentes
41. Flos virgininum
Juan de Triana (fl. 1460 – 1490, died 28 January 1494) was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance period, active in the second half of the 15th century. Twenty works by Triana have been preserved, all in the Cancionero de la Colombina. Four of the works are religious and the remaining are secular. Three of them also have replicas in the Cancionero de Palacio. One of the religious pieces is a fragment of the Song of the Sibyl in Castilian, and the others are liturgical texts in Latin. The compositions have features that are common to the Iberian musicians of the generation before.
42. De mi perdida esperança
43. Juyzio fuerte – O ascondida verdad
44. ¿Querer vieja yo?
Firminus Caron (fl. 1460–1475) was a French composer, and likely a singer, of the early Renaissance. He was highly successful as a composer and influential, especially on the development of imitative counterpoint, and numerous compositions of his survive.
Caron left both sacred and secular music, including five masses and numerous secular songs. One of the earliest masses based on the famous tune L’homme armé is by Caron, and survives in an early 1460s Vatican manuscript along with L’homme armé masses by several other composers. In Caron’s setting the tune is transposed to Dorian mode and elaborated considerably; the upper voices often sing in two-part imitation.
Most of his secular songs were in French, and for three voices, and most survive from Italian manuscripts. Most are rondeaux, and most are in duple meter. One of his songs, Helas que pourra devenir, was extraordinarily famous, and was the second-most-widely distributed song in manuscript sources of the third quarter of the 15th century (De tous biens plaine, by Hayne van Ghizeghem, was the first). It is unusual among songs of the time in using very close imitation, and it seems to have initiated a trend.
45. Clemens et venigna: Sanctus
46. Accueilly m’a la belle: Agnus Dei
47. L’Homme armè: Kyrie
Guillaume Faugues (fl. c. 1460–1475) was a French composer of early Renaissance music. Very little is known of his life, however, a significant representation of his work survives in the form of five mass settings (a large surviving repertoire for a composer of the time). Faugues holds an important place in the history of the Parody mass because of his use of the technique, particularly in Missa Le serviteur. Faugues’ works were widely admired during his most active period, and he may have had a strong influence on the works of Johannes Martini.
Heinrich Finck (1444 or 1445 – 9 June 1527) was a German composer. He served as Kapellmeister first for Prince Alexander of Lithuania, later King of Poland, before living Poland in 1510. He worked in Stuttgart before becoming a member (and months before his death, the Kapellmeister) the Hofkapell. He was the great-uncle of the music theorist and composer Hermann Finck (1527–1558).
His works, mostly part songs and other vocal compositions, show great musical knowledge, and amongst the early masters of the German school he holds a high position. They are found scattered amongst ancient and modern collections of songs and other musical pieces. The library of Zwickau possesses a work containing a collection of fifty-five songs by Finck, printed about the middle of the 16th century.
48. Wer ich eyn falck – Invicto regi jubilo
Johannes de Stokem (c. 1445 – 1487 or 1501) was a Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He is considered to be part of the post-Dufay generation in France. He was a friend of Johannes Tinctoris, another composer of the period.
His piece, Brunette, was published in the Odhecaton and is an early example of a genre of music commonly known as “little brown-eyed girl.” It is one of the few five-voice works found in the Odhecaton.
Gaspar van Weerbeke (c. 1445 – after 1516) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance. He was of the same generation as Josquin des Prez, but unique in his blending of the contemporary Italian style with the older Burgundian style of Dufay.
Weerbeke combined the styles of the Italians with some of the older techniques of the Burgundians. He was almost alone among the Franco-Flemish composers in avoiding the smooth, imitative polyphonic style which was developing at the time, best exemplified by the music of Josquin des Prez.
He composed sacred music: masses, motets, motet cycles, a Magnificat setting, and a setting of the Lamentations, as well as a few secular chansons; but the bulk of his work is sacred vocal music. Attribution of the chansons is controversial, and many scholars believe them to have been composed by composers such as Josquin, or Jean Japart.
In style, much of his motet writing is homophonic, incorporating some of the lightness of the contemporary Italian secular music. Most of his masses are based on chanson melodies, which are stated clearly in the tenor voice, and the other voices usually move in a simple, occasionally parallel manner, related to the manner of Du Fay or the other Burgundians. Once in a while Weerbeke uses imitation but never in the paired manner of Josquin or the pervasive manner of the later Franco-Flemish composers; his style of composition of masses is almost archaic in comparison to his contemporaries.
His music was much esteemed, especially in Italy, where it represented perhaps the popular aesthetic as opposed to the contrapuntal, but foreign grandeur of most of the composers from the Low Countries.
Isaiah the Serb was a Serbian Orthodox hieromonk and composer of chants who flourished in the second half of the 15th century. Along with Kir Joakim, Kir Stefan the Serb, Nikola the Serb he faithfully followed Byzantine musical tradition, writing in the late kalophonic style of the 14th and 15th centuries.
Isaiah’s melodies, some syllabic, others more melismatic, show his inventiveness, and his ability to introduce new and original elements, especially from the Serbian tradition, within the compositional framework of the Byzantine chant, thus creating a new and distinctive style: the Serbo-Byzantine school. His works represent two thirds of preserved Serbian Medieval music. He was also immensely popular after his death, with his compositions being copied until the late 18th century. His works are also included in the Anthologion 928 from the National Library of Greece, Athens.
Hayne van Ghizeghem (c. 1445 – from 1472 to 1497) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance Burgundian School. Hayne is principally known as a composer of chansons, and most of these are rondeaux. Two in particular—Allez regrets, and De tous biens plaine—were so famous in late 15th-century Europe that they appeared in 25 separate sources, many dating from before the invention of printing, and they were used as source material for many later compositions by other composers. Almost all of his works are for three voices; they are simple and clear in texture, in the typical manner of the Burgundian school; and the melodic voice is the highest. Eleven pieces can be definitively attributed to Hayne, though numerous similar works classified as “anonymous” may actually be compositions of his.
Alexander Agricola (born Alexander Ackerman; c. 1446 – 15 August 1506) was a Netherlandish composer of the Renaissance writing in the Franco-Flemish style. A prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment, he was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time.
Agricola is one of the few transitional figures between the Burgundian School and the style of the Josquin generation of Netherlanders who actually wrote music in both styles. Agricola’s style is related to that of Johannes Ockeghem, especially early in his career, and towards the end of his life he was writing using the pervasive imitation characteristic of Josquin des Prez. While few of his works can be dated precisely, he does use many of the non-imitative, complex, rhythmically diverse contrapuntal procedures more often associated with Ockeghem. Unlike Ockeghem, however, he was willing to employ repetition, sequence, and florid imitation in the manner of the other composers who were working around 1500 when the technique became widespread.
Agricola wrote masses, motets, motet-chansons, secular songs in the prevailing formes fixes such as rondeaux and bergerettes, other chansons, and instrumental music. Much of his instrumental music was based on secular music by Gilles Binchois or Ockeghem. Many of these pieces had become quite popular in the late 15th century.
Above all the variants in his general musical style over his working life, Agricola himself wrote in a highly distinctive style, taking the mysteriously sinuous lines of Ockeghem as his point of departure. His music is often very busy and highly detailed, with repeated sequence, repetition of terse rhythmic and motivic units, and a desire to usurp the underlying pulse, sometimes seeming to border on the perverse, either by prolonging cadential figures to cadence on the “wrong” beat, or by shifting the metrical beat of some parts against others. As an example, the closing Agnus Dei of his unusually extended Missa ‘In myne zin’ features the cantus firmus stated in equal notes of eleven minims duration each in first statement, followed by a statement of five minims duration each, or in the second Salve Regina setting, offsetting part of the statement of the cantus firmus by a quaver for its entire duration, in both cases with the other voices proceeding in a more strict quadruple meter above.
Other “games” played in the music include posing puzzles of mode and musica ficta for the performers (e.g. the Kyrie of the Missa Le serviteur plays with the expectations of the very well known plainchant cantus firmus by setting up some knotty issues of the implied possibility of modal inflection with consistent extra flats.) The music is characteristically athletic in all voice parts, with the lower parts in particular featuring much that requires very fine singers, and not representing the normal simply harmonic function of the tenor-bass combinations used by most of his contemporaries. Often a highly elaborate set of quick motifs will spring unexpected from a previous slow-moving texture (e.g. the eruption of detailed duos beginning at Glorificamus te and climaxing at Adoramus te in the Gloria of the Missa in myne zin). His music was very highly regarded in its day, the very distinctive style leading to one contemporary commentator referring to it as “crazy”, and another as “sublime”.
Philippe Basiron (c. 1449–1491) was a French composer, singer, and organist of the Renaissance. He was an innovative and prominent composer of the late 15th century, and was praised by many of his contemporaries.
Basiron’s music was widely distributed in Europe, and was highly praised by his contemporaries. In addition he was precocious: many of his chansons were written in his teens, and probably much more of his early music has been lost. A total of four masses, three motets and six chansons have survived, and also one mass which has an uncertain attribution to him.
Stylistically Basiron’s music resembles that of Ockeghem, and is innovative in several ways. He used sequential repetition, and was perhaps the first composer to write a piece in which imitation was the main structural device from beginning to end (the Regina celi). He also was capable of creating long movements by juxtaposing sections of varying texture, but without disunity; his Messa de Franza is the most famous example. Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara, heard of Basiron’s fame, and asked that his Missa l’homme armé be sent to him.