based on A History of Music in Western Culture, 4th edition, Bonds

1. Music in the 16th Century
Chapter 6, A History of Music in Western
Culture (Bonds)

2. Major Influences
◦ 1520-1600 changed Europe’s musical landscape:
◦ Sacred music became and important WEAPON in the struggle between
Protestants and Catholics
◦ Composers began writing specifically for instruments for the first time
◦ Rapid advances in music printing expanded consumers beyond the royal
courts
◦ Arrangements for voice, lute, and keyboard began to appear in large numbers
◦ Poetry in the vernacular (especially in Italy) emerged resulting in the
MADRIGAL
◦ Both Protestants and Catholics rethought the relationship between words
and music within their respective liturgies

3. SECULAR VOCAL MUSIC
1500-1600

4. Parisian chanson and
Italian madrigal
◦ Parisian chanson is lighter and more chordal than earlier chansons –
it is homorhythmic and dominated by tonalities that seem like modern
tonality; melody is confined to the upper line
◦ Italian madrigal is a composition for 3+ voices with secular texts –
chordal texture, but very soon true contrapuntal writing became
prevalent; the madrigal is through-composed (setting each line to text
to essentially new music) which allowed for explicit word painting

5. MADRIGALS LIVE ON
ACROSS THE
CONTINENT– BY 1560,
FIVE VOICES BECAME
THE NORM – THEY
WERE UNDEMANDING
VOCALLY,AND WELL-
TRAINEDAMATEURS
COULD SING THEM

6. MADDALENA
CASULANA
(CA.1544-1583?)
First professional woman composer
to see her vocal music in print!

7. GERMANY
◦ Lied and Tenorlied – typically put a well-known tune in the
tenor to become a secular cantus firmus
◦ Meistersinger guilds – not professional musicians, but
rather tradesmen and craftsmen who formed societies
through Germany to cultivate music, poetry, and singing
– they held regular competitions

8. SPAIN
Principle secular genre was the villancico,
equivalent to a French virelai

9. ENGLAND
◦ Italian madrigal was transplanted to England
from Italy in the 1560s in a series of
publications
◦ At the time, the English were infatuated with all
things Italian. Shakespeare wrote at least 5 plays
in the 1590s that are set in Italy!
◦ Thomas Morley in 1597 did not like this Italian
fixation and began composing madrigals in
English
◦ Lute song – closely related to madrigal, but are
strophic and were vocal solos/duets
accompanied by a lute

10. SACRED VOCAL MUSIC
Music of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

11. Martin Luther
◦ Luther recognized the power of music to spread the Protestant
faith.
◦ He placed special emphasis on communal participation in worship,
encouraged congregational singing in the common language of the
people
◦ Chorales – hymns composed to be sung in Protestant churches,
usually highly polyphonic

12. Other Protestant leaders
disagreed
◦ John Calvin banned instrumental music from church and
singing could only be unaccompanied and in unison
◦ Luther: “I am not satisfied with him who despises music,
as all fanatics do….Music is…a gift of God, not a gift of
men”
◦ Anthems – motets written in the English language for
liturgical use

13. Counter-Reformation:
Council of Trent
Roman Catholic Church eliminated
many plainchants and insisted that the
function of sacred music was to serve
the text; the text should be clear and
intelligible to listeners.
“The whole plan of singing should be
constituted not to give empty pleasure
to the ear, but in such a way that the
words be clearly understood by
all….They shall also banish from
church all music that contains…things
that are lascivious or impure.”
The compositions of Palestrina
perfectly embodied this principle.

14. Instrumental Music
Composers began to write for instruments
alone for the first time in the history of music
◦ These compositions fell into four broad categories:
◦ Intabulations – an existing vocal work reset for
strings or keyboard
◦ Variations – restating a musical theme in a
delightful and interesting way
◦ Freely composed works – no established
scheme or vocal model
◦ Dance music – each dance form had its own
distinctive steps, meter, tempo, and character
Intabulations

15. Binary form
◦ Dance music abounds in
repetition, and the larger
sections to be repeated – the
reprises – can be played as
often as desired. Two reprises
added together constitute a
binary form, an early instance
of syntactic form (central
idea is presented and varied
over the entire piece). The old
paratactic form presented
each new section as an
essentially new idea.
◦ These dancers are dancing
the moresca, or “Moorish”
dance, influenced by the
Arabic cultures of Morocco
and Spain

16. Summary
◦ Expanding textures
◦ Intricate voicings
◦ Music composed for instruments alone
◦ Attention to word painting…characterize the
music of this time
Thomas Tallis’s If Ye Love Me is representative
of the best of 17th century vocal music
AUS Choir: If Ye Love Me, Tallis