Renaissance Music: Polyphonic Period

Renaissance music POLYPHONIC PERIOD

Portrait of Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi in Venice, 1640, by Domenico Fetti

contrapuntal polyphony

First species

Second species

Third species

Fourth species

Fifth species (florid counterpoint)

Interval (music)

Interval names U = unison; 8ve = octave

diatonic to C major. All other intervals are chromatic to C major

Musical mode

The eight musical modes. f indicates "final"

Madrigal (music)

Luca Marenzio

The Lute Player, by Caravaggio; the performer is reading music by Arcadelt

Mass Music

Pa rap hr as e m as s

Messe de Nostre Dame

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

Renaissance motets

Binchois (right), with Guillaume Dufay

Luca della Robbia: fragment from a choir Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence.

Manuscript of Missa O Crux Lignum, a mass by Busnois

William Byrd

The piano, a common keyboard instrument

Manuscript of Omnium bonorum plena, a motet by Compère, and possibly his earliest surviving work;

Josquin's motet

A passage from the psalm motet Domine ne in furore

Canonic masses

Opening of the Agnus Dei II from the Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales

Illuminated chansonnier by Heinrich Isaac

Orlande de Lassus, collection of Civico Museo Bibliografia Musicale, Bologna

Lassus leading a chamber ensemble, painted by Hans Mielich

Cristóbal de Morales

Chigi codex featuring the Kyrie of Ockeghem's Missa Ecce ancilla Domini.

Jacob Obrecht

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Canon (music)

De profundis by Josquin des Prez

Renaissance lute (holding position)

woodwind musical instrument

Various recorders

A picture of the front of an alto (treble) recorder with the main parts of the recorder illustrated

The back of the same recorder with annotations

Renaissance recorders

Isorhythmic tenor from the first part of the Kyrie of Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame

isorhythmic motet

Instruments of the Renaissance Brass

Three different cornetts: mute cornett, curved cornett and tenor cornett

Four sackbuts: two tenors, alto, bass

Strings

Viol

Early Italian tenor viola da gamba, detail from the painting St. Cecilia, by Raphael Sanzio, c. 1510.

Irish Harp

The medieval 'Queen Mary harp' Cl àrsac h n a Banr ìgh Mài ri

Hurdy gurdy

Wheel fiddle

Detail of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch

Lute

Percussion tambourine

Egyptian riq

The Brazilian pandeiro

Jew's harp

A modern Jew's harp

Wo odw ind s (a er opho ne s)

Shawm

A schematic of a typical reed pipe

The Bagpiper, by Hendrick ter Brugghen (17th Century, Netherlands)

Pan flute or pan pipe

Andean panflute, or zampoña