Okay, I'm going to talk about the Renaissance period now. This time, I'm going to break it up. This post will just be about the style of music in the Renaissance period and society at the time. Rather broad, I know, but we'll see how it goes.
The word "renaissance" means "renewal" or "rebirth." The "renewal" referred to here is a renewed interest in the culture, arts and sciences of Greek and Roman times. The arts, including architecture, conformed with Greek ideals of balance and symmetry. Art had more depth and realism, and the human body was now considered to be an object of beauty. Scientific inquiry and exploration became the big thing of the time, and the Renaissance period saw great discoveries and inventions like Galileo's invention of the telescope, Columbus discovering America, and the all-important invention of the printing press which provided people with a greater access to education. Humanism is the term that refers to the celebration of human achievements. Amidst this period of scientific enquiry, the Church became slightly less important than it was in the preceding period, but it was still pretty important.
Music was centred around the same genres as medieval music was, but with some changes of course. Sacred music underwent some radical changes following the introduction of polyphony (multiple voices singing different lines at the same time) towards the end of the medieval period. There were now Masses based on secular tunes, like the L'homme armé mass (I forgot who wrote this one, though), and some composers started introducing instruments. Secular music expanded somewhat because of the declining importance of the Church, and more of it was written down. The most popular forms of secular music included dance music, chansons and madrigals. Italy and England had madrigals, the English version being simpler and lighter than the Italian version. Madrigals, sung by 3-8 voices, were entertaining songs about popular themes such as love. They made good use of word painting, which is where the meaning of the words is reflected in the music- for example, a harsh dissonance for "death" or an ascending scale for "heaven." (Wow, talking about "death" and "heaven" in the same sentence sounds so morbid. Ah well.) One well-known madrigal was Fair Phyllis, written by an English composer called John Farmer.
As instruments still weren't very common and choral music became increasingly more complex, the Renaissance period is often considered to be the "golden age of choral music." (That's not to say that instrumental music didn't make any advances, however- there was some purely instrumental music, and most music didn't actually specify instruments, so you could use voices or instruments or a combination of both- it was all up to the performer.) Polyphony was very popular, with complex harmonies, increasing in number and complexity until a very important event known as the Counter-Reformation (more on that later). Perfect intervals were used less frequently, as now the sweeter sound of 3rds and 6ths were more popular. Imitative polyphony (where one line "imitates" another) became more popular. Antiphonal music, which is where groups come in in alternation, was also popular. It was during this period that harmonies also began to centre on triads and music began to have more of a fixed meter.
Now, back to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The Reformation all started when Martin Luther, a priest, nailed his 95 theses to the doors of his church in Wittenberg (you can read a translation of them at http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm). This wasn't such a forceful act as you may believe- the church doors were often used as a kind of noticeboard, and Martin Luther wasn't really being disparaging of the Church. All he really wanted was to see some reforms which he thought would make the Church better: translating the Bible into the vernacular and allowing the congregation to sing in Church. He was especially critical of the practice of "indulgences" which is where people pay the Church to absolve themselves of their sins. Martin Luther just wanted to inspire scholarly debate, but instead the full-fledged Reformation took place.
Eventually some priests thought that the Reformation was all going a bit too far and so they formed the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent proposed different reforms in a process known as the Counter-Reformation. One aspect that the Council of Trent targeted was music. They were opposed to complex polyphony that obscured the text, the use of noisy instruments in Church, the use of secular texts as a cantus firmus, and even the attitude of the singers in church, which they described as "irreverent." Indeed, some of the members of the Council of Trent would have advocated a change back to the simple monophony of the Middle Ages, but that obviously didn't happen. One of the influences preventing this was Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass, which I'm going to talk about in a later post. Stay tuned...
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