Renaissance Music — Franco-Flemish School, Palestrina, and the Birth of Opera

The Great Transformation of Renaissance Music

From the monophonic, church-centered world of the previous [Medieval music] article, Renaissance music of the 15th–16th centuries brings a great transformation:

• The summit of polyphony (Franco-Flemish school → Palestrina)
• The artistic elevation of secular music (chanson, madrigal)
• Widespread music printing — mass circulation of scores
• The birth of opera (c. 1600)

“Anonymous church chorus” gives way to “court-based composer-centered art.” The direct prelude to the Baroque (1600–1750).

The Franco-Flemish School — The Summit of Polyphony

The Franco-Flemish school (15th–16th centuries) comprised composers from what is now Belgium, the northern Netherlands, and northern France. They were the center of European music in the 15th and 16th centuries and served at courts across Europe.

Generations

• First generation: Guillaume Dufay (c. 1400–1474), Gilles Binchois (c. 1400–1460) — Burgundian court
• Second generation: Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410–1497) — the summit of canonic technique
• Third generation: Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521) — the greatest of the Renaissance
• Fourth generation: Orlande de Lassus (c. 1532–1594) — over 2000 works survive

Character

• Four- to six-voice polyphony
• Independent melodies in every voice (imitation, canonic technique)
• Latin (sacred) and vernacular (chanson) alike
• Technically demanding, richly ornamented

Josquin des Prez — Greatest of the Renaissance

Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521) is called the greatest composer of the Renaissance. He worked in France, Italy (Rome), and modern-day Belgium. His output includes 18 masses, over 100 motets, more than 70 chansons.

• Missa Pange Lingua — each voice develops a Gregorian theme
• Ave Maria — a four-voice motet, one of the peaks of Renaissance vocal music
• Mille regretz — a chanson, beloved of Emperor Charles V

Martin Luther praised Josquin as “master of the notes; they must do what he wills; while other composers have to do what the notes will.”

The Printing Revolution — 1501, Petrucci

In 1501, Ottaviano Petrucci in Venice published the world’s first printed music book:

• Harmonice Musices Odhecaton (“A hundred pieces of harmonic music”)
• 96 chansons and motets

A great turning point in the history of music. Music that had been copied by hand, one manuscript at a time, could now circulate in printed multitudes.

• Composers gained fame at a distance
• Music education democratized
• The musics of different countries influenced one another

The musical counterpart of Gutenberg’s printing (c. 1450). It accelerated the international spread of Renaissance music.

Palestrina — The Perfection of Church Music

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594), born in the town of Palestrina near Rome, spent his life as a church musician in Rome, including as maestro di cappella at the Sistine Chapel.

He produced 105 masses, over 250 motets, madrigals, and hymns — more than 700 works.

“The Textbook of Counterpoint”

Palestrina’s style became the model of strict counterpoint. Since Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) it has been the standard basis of counterpoint teaching worldwide.

• Each voice moves smoothly
• Dissonances are prepared and resolved
• A luminous, uninterrupted flow

Palestrina pursued the mathematical purity of music. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn all learned counterpoint from him.

Missa Papae Marcelli (1567)

Palestrina’s most famous mass. Legend has it that when the Council of Trent (1545–1563) debated whether “excessively polyphonic music whose text cannot be understood should be banished from the church,” Palestrina proved that “clarity of text and beauty of counterpoint can coexist.”

(The legend is largely later invention, but the work is celebrated as the ideal of church music.)

In Performance Today

• Tallis Scholars (UK), Hilliard Ensemble (UK), Voces8 — early-music choirs, complete recordings
• The choir of the Sistine Chapel, Vatican — direct heir to Palestrina
• CDs, concerts, YouTube worldwide

Secular Music — The Age of the Madrigal

In the 16th century secular music became art. Its central form is the madrigal.

The Italian Madrigal (16th c.)

• Italian poems set for four to six voices
• Themes of love, nature, irony, lament
• Cipriano de Rore, Gesualdo, Monteverdi and others develop the form

Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613)

Prince of Venosa and Count of Consa — an aristocratic composer. His six books of madrigals use extreme chromaticism, dissonance, and expressionist harmony startling even to modern ears.

In 1590 he murdered his wife Maria and her lover the Duke of Andria, and was acquitted on aristocratic privilege. “The composer as murderer” — a strange place in the history of music.

The English Madrigal (1580–1620)

Thomas Morley, John Dowland, Thomas Weelkes developed the English madrigal — the flowering of Elizabethan musical culture.

John Dowland’s (1563–1626) lute songs remain popular. Sting released the CD Songs from the Labyrinth (2006).

The Rise of Instrumental Music

Instrumental music also developed during the Renaissance:

Keyboard

• Organ — Frescobaldi (Italy), Sweelinck (Netherlands)
• Clavichord and harpsichord — Cabezón (Spain), Byrd (England), Bull (England)

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (early 17th century, England) is a collection of 297 virginal pieces — a summary of the English virginalist school.

Lute Music

• Song accompanied by lute and solo lute
• John Dowland’s famous pieces
• The direct ancestor of modern guitar music

Ensembles

• Viol consort — four to six viols of varying sizes
• Precursors of the brass band (cornett, sackbut)
• Pfeifermusik (town waits)

The Reformation and Music — After 1517

Martin Luther’s Reformation (1517) had huge musical consequences:

Protestant Music

• The German chorale (hymn) — the congregation sings in the vernacular
• Jesu, meiner Seele and O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (the chorale in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion)
• The foundation of Bach’s chorale music later

Luther, himself a music lover, wrote many chorales such as Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.

Catholic Counter-Reformation

• The music debates of the Council of Trent (1545–1563)
• Palestrina’s “purified” church music
• The Latin mass continues

Music reflects the schism of faith.

Around 1600 — Toward the Baroque

At the turn from the 16th to the 17th century, music transforms again:

• Polyphony → continuo and monody (accompanied solo)
• Equal voices → the contrast of soloist and accompaniment
• Church → court and theater
• Anonymous chorus → the assertion of the composer’s individuality

The symbol of this shift is Monteverdi’s opera.

Claudio Monteverdi — The Invention of Opera

Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was born in Cremona (the home of Italian violin-making). He made the crucial bridge from Renaissance to Baroque.

Life

• 1567 — Born in Cremona (his father was a doctor)
• 1590 — Court musician at Mantua (Gonzaga)
• 1607 — Premiere of L’Orfeo — the effective beginning of opera
• 1613 — Appointed maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s, Venice — for the rest of his life
• 1637 — The first public opera house (San Cassiano, Venice) opens; Monteverdi is a principal composer
• 1643 — Dies in Venice at 76

The “Two Practices”

Monteverdi wrote that music has:

• First practice (prima pratica) — the strict counterpoint of Palestrina
• Second practice (seconda pratica) — the new practice, where the text’s emotion has priority

The idea that “music is the servant of the text” becomes the foundation of the Baroque era.

L’Orfeo (1607) — The Birth of Opera

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo premiered on 24 February 1607 in Mantua. It is the earliest complete opera to survive.

Prehistory

• 1580s — The Florentine Camerata (humanists and musicians) proposes reviving the music of ancient Greek tragedy
• 1597 — Jacopo Peri’s Dafne — the earliest known opera (only fragments survive)
• 1600 — Peri’s Euridice — the earliest complete opera

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was the artistic consummation of these attempts.

Story

A Greek myth: the singer Orpheus descends to the underworld to bring back his dead wife Eurydice, but violates the taboo against looking back and loses her.

• Prologue and five acts
• Orpheus’s aria “Tu se’ morta” — the first great expressive aria in operatic history
• Orchestra of over 40 (strings, recorders, cornetts, sackbuts, harpsichord)

Opera as the total art of text, music, drama, and dance now runs for 400 years.

Monteverdi’s Other Masterpieces

• L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642) — a late masterpiece at 75, on Emperor Nero, blending politics and eros
• Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610) — a great work of church music, sometimes called Monteverdi’s Mass in B minor
• Books of Madrigals — nine books, the summation of secular Renaissance music

Renaissance Music Today

• Choral music — the standard repertory of amateur choirs (Palestrina, Josquin)
• Historical performance — Tallis Scholars, Hilliard Ensemble, Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent recorded extensively
• Opera — Monteverdi’s three operas are frequently staged today
• Pedagogy — “Palestrina style” is still taught in counterpoint and harmony courses

“The musical inventions of the Renaissance” live on. The beauty of polyphonic choral singing still deeply moves 21st-century audiences.

From This Article to the Next

We have surveyed 200 years of Renaissance music. The next article enters the Baroque (1600–1750). Vivaldi (Italy), Bach (Germany), and Handel (Germany → England), the three great Baroque composers. The development of continuo, the concerto, the opera and oratorio, and the suite — 150 years in which music takes vast technical and expressive leaps. Corresponds to article 02 of the sister [Lineage of the Piano] series, seen here from the broader orchestral, vocal, and instrumental perspective.