· The aristocracy of secular wealth and power produced by rising capitalism in the Renaissance resulted in a newly emergent feeling of personal freedom from religious authoritarianism and a consequent emphasis on the pleasures of the sense
· It was a period of rebirth of the classic virtues of antiquity, primarily with reference to the visual arts and literature
· Recovery of Greek theory and philosophy concerning music
· A new musical style stemmed mainly from recognition of music as an autonomous art of sound unshackled (released) by Medieval restraints imposed by liturgical or secular function and by the structure of the text.
· The influence of socio-political developments--- bringing Byzantine scholars to Europe in the wake of the Turkish threat to Constantinople---the eventual fall of the city in 1453
· Anglo-Burgundian alliance of the 15th c. --- forged musical as well as political links and helped establish an age of dominance by Northern European composers, e.g. the Burgundians, Dutch, Flemish, and Northern Frenchmen who comprised the several generations of composers known as the Netherlanders
· 16th c.---Protestant Reformation (1517) --- political and religious; ---musically, the Protestant chorale melodies and their polyphonic settings were answered in musical kind by the magnificent late flowering of Catholic Mass and motet
· “the culture of the Renaissance was filled with music, permeated by it, probably to a much higher degree than the culture of any other period…”
· music was cultivated at every level of society, with more great composers, more kinds of instruments, and more participation by both professional and amateur musicians than in any other age
· both secular and religious life required music
· church patronage remained at a high level, yet the great early Renaissance musical establishments were the “chapels” of noble patrons as Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, Henry VI of England…
· Aristocratic patrons also supported music by commissioning works for churches and religious groups, and through participation in academies
· Amateur music-making flourished at all levels of society in the form of domestic chamber music for the middle classes, municipal music, and popular and folk music for the lower classes
· Untrained minstrels in the services of courts and towns were gradually replaced during the Renaissance by trained musicians

New attitude towards sonority
· (1) basing their music firmly on the interval of the 3rds rather than the perfect consonances;
· (2) firmly regulating the treatment of dissonance
· Counterpoint ---was leavened with generous use of homophony
· Polyphony--- was simultaneously conceived rather than being composed part by part
· The practice of true choral polyphony, using a full vocal range from soprano to bass, and a trend towards a homogeneous use of voices and of instruments
· Medieval techniques (e.g. cantus firmus) were adapted to a new aesthetic purpose
· The structural control of music through the poetic text, as in the refrain forms of the ars nova, gradually disappeared, as did isorhythm
· A desire to reflect both the prosody of the text and its meaning, largely through tone-painting, reflects the strong impact of Renaissance humanism

Burgundian Chanson of Dufay
·  (1) consonant tertian sonority, which revealed the influence of fauxbourdon in its carefully restricted use of dissonance;
· (2) greater homogeneity and fluidity of rhythm--- represents the first great musical achievement of the Renaissance
·  Dufay and Binchois (influenced by the English sound as represented by John Dunstable) created an elegant chanson art perfectly suited for the 15thc. court.

Netherlands chanson
· of Prez and Lassus,
· by way of contrast, generally reflected the influence of the motet.

Parisian chanson (16th c.)
· lighter tone and more democratic realm of chordal homophonyand declamatory rhythms
· seems to have been aimed more at pleasing the music-makers than an aristocratic audience
· The chanson (known as the end of the Renaissance as the air de cour) offered one of the few direct musical links to humanism via the late Renaissance style known as musique mesuree a lantique

Creation of a unified Mass Ordinary
· the greatest structural triumph of Renaissance composers
· Transformation of the Medieval cantus-firmus technique from liturgically proper use in one movement in an inner voice-part into the foundation of a five-movement cycle clearly placed aesthetic above liturgical concerns and indicated the emergence of music as an art

Early Renaissance trend towards greater artistic freedom
· (1) placing the cantus firmus in the top voice;
· (2) altering it freely by using the paraphrase technique;
· (3) introducing liturgically improper cantus firmi;
· (4) including secular melodies; and
· (5) composing original melodies
 

High Renaissance
· parody technique reflected still greater freedom but at the same time a residual (outstanding) craftsman-like pride in building from a pre-existent basis.
· New sonority--- (1) in the growing pleasure in textural contrast and varied chord-voicings and spacings; (2) in the newfound delight in tonal (as opposed to modal) chord successions
· Through Dufay and especially Ockeghem, the Mass Ordinary became the touchstone of competence for a composer, a position it maintained in the High Renaissance works of des Prez and Lassus and especially in the extraordinary masterpieces of Palestrina and de Victoria

Motet
· the leading genre for new style developments in the early 16th c.
· Its greater concern for the expression of the words reflected the spirit of humanism, as did its thorough equalization of voice-parts
· Feature--- equality of voices in their thematic roles with any voice permitted to carry the principal theme---symbolized the change from the hierarchical structure of Medieval society to a freer spirit that recognized and valued individual genius in the arts as being equivalent in its way to rank conferred by birth
· The principal technique explored in the Renaissance motet---systematic use of carefully graded and interlinked points of imitation---is an art of thematic manipulation very distant from medieval structural devices
· Des Prez and Lassus (of Netherlanders) developed the style of imitative counterpoint and carried it all over Europe ---subtle refinements of text expression (musica reservata) characterize the development of the Netherlands motet
· Venetian polychoral art, a more dramatic style in the motet of Adrian Willaert, was to culminate in the Late Renaissance concertato style of Giovanni Gabriell
· High Renaissance---the rise of vernacular genres across Europe fragmented what was a universal musical language-the Netherlands style-and created numerous new secular genres
· E.g. the Parisian chanson and air de cour in France; the Villancico in Spain; the polyphonic Lied in Germany; the canzona, ballet, English Madrigal, and song in England; and the frottola, canzonetta, villanella, balletto, and others in Italy
· The meteoric rise of the Italian madrigal reveals two concerns of paramount interest for the late Renaissance, the creation of an emotional response in the listener and the composer’s desire to offer him a more sensuous sonorous experience

Madrigal( of Luca Marenzio )
· tone-painting was enhanced by expressive use of chromaticism, freer treatment of dissonance, sensitivity to verbal declamation, and, in performance, by altering tempo and dynamics when appropriate.
· By the 16th c. the style was exaggerated by Gesualdo and Monteverdi to the point of abandoning the classic virtues of clarity, balance, and moderation.
· The use of ensemble (as opposed to choral) polyphony in the madrigal led to the accompanied madrigal for a soloist with accompaniment, and a consequent polarity between melody and bass, both of which constitute basically Baroque traits

Instrumental Music
· There arose for the first time an independent instrumental music---beginning with the idiomatic organ works by the Germans in the 15th c, instrumental genres gradually established themselves and thus strengthened the autonomous nature of the art of music
· Solo genres include---preludes and embellished cantus-firmus works for organ, various keyboard arrangements of vocal works, keyboard variations, and such improvisatory types as the fantasia and the toccata
· Dance music in works of lute or keyboard, in improvisatory dance-types like the basse danse, and in suites for ensembles of instruments
· The most popular pairs of dances ---the pavane-galliard and passamezzo-saltarello
· The foremost ensemble genres---modeled on vocal types, the recercare and the imitative fantasia on the motet and the canzona on the chanson
· Whereas the change from the Renaissance to the Baroque offers a clear contrast in vocal music, the leading instrumental genres basically continued their gradual evolution
· Italy was in the forefront of developments in instrumental music
· So prevalent was instrumental performance of vocal works in Italy that Ottaviano de Petrucci, one of the first and the most influential music printers of the early 16th c., published many sets of part-books of vocal music without the textsmusic printing helped disseminate the art of music to a wider circle of music-lovers, both professional and amateur
· The rise of growing professional class of musicians who were not bound to the church brought greater freedom and respect for music, and enhanced the social status of composers, though not generally to the level of the great Renaissance artists and writers.
·  The rise of amateur music-making can be traced by the appearance of a succession of how-to-learn-music books. (in England and Italy)
· the dominant Renaissance attitude towards music was articulated in the later Renaissance---the proper aim of the musician, like that of the poet is to please and delight
· not only recognized music as an autonomous art but placed the craft of composition-which, as the science of counterpoint, required much training and many rules-in a subsidiary position to the creation of beauty
· it is clear that composers may break the rules so long as they please the ear
· the next step, from delighting the hearer to inducing a stronger emotional response, leads directly into the Baroque period.