I.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Until recently, music written before 1600 was little known, seldom performed, and poorly understood. However, musicological research and development of ensembles and musical societies specializing in early music have done much to make this reach treasury of music available to the present day listener. Though there is a wealth of preserved material from the ancient civilization in sculpture, architecture, poetry and drama, there are but a few extant fragments of actual music dating before the birth of Christ. Philosophical and theoretical writings from ancient Greece, Egypt, China and other countries give us some insight into the highly significant role music played in these societies but provide little understanding of the music itself. The early Christian church developed a body in monophonic liturgical music that eventually was called Gregorian chant, after Pope Gregory. Among the earliest extant examples of secular music are a few songs of the goliards and jongleurs, travelling students and minstrels from the early middle ages. Many songs of the troubadours and trouvenes, courtly poet-musicians in France in the 12th centuries and preserved in beautifully illuminated manuscripts called chansonniers. Around year 1300 a significant change occurred in the development of music. The 13th century ars antique (old art), with its emphasis on scared music was replaced the 14 th century ars nova (new art). In the Burgundian School of the early 15th century, composers showed a preference for melodic and harmonic thirds and sixths, and for higher tessitura, motets of these period are in free polyphonic texture. The Renaissance period in music roughly from 1450 to 1600 and includes the Flemish, Venetian, Roman, Spanish, English schools. The 16th century, one of the most fertile periods of all music literature, saw the culmination of sacred polyphonic writing.

II. MUSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

1. Repetition and Contrasts were the dominant principles; 2. Irregular in motive and phrase construction; 3. Variation principle became important 4. Church mode

III. PRE-BAROQUE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

1. RECORDER -> a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct fluteswhistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple. It is distinguished from other members of the family by having holes for seven fingers (the lower one or two often doubled to facilitate the production of semitones) and one for the thumb of the uppermost hand. The bore of the recorder is tapered slightly, being widest at the mouthpiece end and narrowest towards the foot on Baroque recorders, or flared almost like a trumpet at the bottom on Renaissance instruments.

2. VIOL -> is any one of a family of bowed, fretted and stringed musical instruments that first appeared in the mid to late 15th century and was most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

3. CORNETTO -> The cornett, cornetto, or zink is an early wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500-1650. It was used in what are now called alta capellas or wind ensembles. It is not to be confused with the trumpet-like cornet. The sound of the cornett was produced by lip vibrations against a cup mouthpiece. It consists of a conical wooden pipe covered in leather, about 24 inches long, and has finger holes and a small horn or ivory mouthpiece.

4. ORGAN -> the organ (from Greek

organon, "organ, instrument, tool") is a keyboard

instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard, played either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with inventing the hydraulis. By around the 8th century, it had overcome early associations with gladiatorial combat and gradually assumed a prominent place in the liturgy of the Catholic Church. Subsequently it re-emerged as a secular and recital instrument.

5. LUTE -> Lute can refer generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the HornbostelSachs system), more specifically to any plucked string instrument with a neck (either fretted or unfretted) and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud both descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. It is also an accompanying instrument, especially in vocal works, often realizing a basso continuo or playing a written-out accompaniment. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist, "lewtist" or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any string instrument) is referred to as a luthier. The words "lute" and "oud" derive from Arabic al-ud ( - literally "the wood"). Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests ud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud, which meant "string", "stringed instrument", or "lute". It has equally been suggested the "wood" in the name may have distinguished the instrument by its wooden soundboard from skinfaced predecessorsGianfranco Lotti suggests the "wood" appellation originally carried derogatory connotations because of proscriptions of all instrumental music in early Islam.

IV. VOCAL FORMS

A. SACRED VOCAL FORMS

1. GREGORIAN CHANT OR PLAINSONG -> monophonic, or unison, liturgical music of the Roman Catholic Church, used to accompany the text of the mass and the canonical hours, or divine office. Gregorian chant is named after St. Gregory I, during whose papacy (590604) it was collected and codified. Charlemagne, king of the Franks (768814), imposed Gregorian chant on his kingdom, where another liturgical traditionthe Gallican chantwas in common use. During the 8th and 9th centuries, a process of assimilation took place between Gallican and Gregorian chants; and it is the chant in this evolved form that has come down to the present.

Office -> involves a variety of texts for the various hours: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None,
and Compline.

Mass -> is the commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. It consists of some texts to be
sung and others to be recited. 2. TROPE -> in medieval church music, melody, explicatory text, or both added to a plainchant melody. Tropes are of two general types: those adding a new text to a melisma (section of music having one syllable extended over many notes); and those inserting new music, usually with words, between existing sections of melody and text. Troping was rooted in similar practices in the ancient Byzantine liturgy and arose in the West, probably in France, by the 8th century. The custom reached the musically important Swiss monastery of Saint Gall by the 9th century and soon became widespread throughout Europe. 3. SEQUENCE -> in music, a melodic or chordal figure repeated at a new pitch level (that is, transposed), thus unifying and developing musical material. The word sequence has two principal uses: the medieval sequence in the liturgy of the Latin mass and the harmonic sequence in tonal music. In medieval music and literature, the sequence was a Latin text associated with a specific chant melody, to be sung at mass between the Alleluia and the reading of the Gospel. It developed about the 9th century from the trope.

4. CONDUCTUS -> in medieval music, a metrical Latin song of ceremonial character for one, two, or three voices. The word first appeared in mid-12th-century manuscripts with reference to processional pieces. In the 13th century the conductus was one of three genres that dominated French polyphonic music. Unlike the organum and the motet, however, which were based on preexisting chants, the conductus was a freely composed setting of a single metrical Latin text. Of particular importance for future developments was its homophonic texture (all voices moving at the same rhythmic rate or, from the modern perspective. 5. ORGANUM -> originally, any musical instrument (later in particular an organ); the term attained its lasting sense, however, during the Middle Ages in reference to a polyphonic (many-voiced) setting, in certain specific styles, of Gregorian chant. In its earliest written form, found in the treatise Musica enchiriadis (c. 900; Musical Handbook), organum consisted of two melodic lines moving simultaneously note against note. Sometimes a second, or organal, voice doubled the chant, or principal voice, a fourth or a fifth below. 6. CLAUSULA -> in music, a 13th-century polyphonic genre featuring two strictly measured parts: notable examples are the descant sections based on the Gregorian chant melisma (several notes to a syllable), which in the organa of the Notre-Dame school alternated with sections featuring coloratura-like passages in relatively free rhythm above a slower-moving cantus firmus. 7. ANTHEMS -> The term anthem means either a specific form of Anglican church music (in music theory and religious contexts), or more generally, a song (or composition) of celebration, usually acting as a symbol for a distinct group of people, as in the term "national anthem". 8. HYMN -> a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word hymn derives from Greek (hymnos), which means "a song of praise". Collections of hymns are known as hymnals or hymnbooks.

B. . SECULAR FORMS

1. TROUBADOUR, TROUVERE, and MINNESINGERS SONGS -> These included various musical and poetic forms, usually sectional in nature.

2. MADRIGAL -> The 14th century Madrigal is a fixed secular form with two or three verses with the same music followed by a stanza with contrasting music. Madrigal texts maybe concerned with love, philosophy, the beauties of nature, or similar themes, Like Motet, they are written with effective word painting.

3. THE FRENCH CHANSON -> The French Chanson is more clearly sectional than the Madrigal. It can often be identified by characteristic dactylic opening rhythms.

4. THE POLYPHONIC LIED -> The German equivalent of the Madrigal is often based on a folk melody.

PRE-BAROQUE REPRESENTATIVE COMPOSERS

PALESTRINA, GIOVANNI PIERLUIGI DA (Italian, 1525-1594)

It can be difficult to separate myth from reality in the life of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. He was one of the most highly acclaimed musicians of the sixteenth century, but was not the "Savior of Church Music." He did write a tremendous number of musical works, refining the very musical style of his time. He did not single-handedly transmit The Way to Write Spiritual Music, but apparently he was a diligent and reasonably pious family man, hard-nosed in his business dealings and savvy in manipulating professional contacts. He was not a priest, though he once considered Holy Orders after losing a wife and two sons to the plague. The balance and elegant moderation of his music may derive more from conservative melodic and harmonic style than from divine mediation. But centuries after his death, Palestrina's music is still actively serving devotional needs across the world, and echoes of his first biographer's awe still cling to his name. Palestrina's life is generally well documented: He spent all of his career around Rome, working in churches with good archival records. His exact birth date remains unknown, but his age at death is given in a famous eulogy. Whether he was born in Rome or in the provincial town of Palestrina, "Gianetto" received his first musical training in Rome as choir boy at Santa Maria Maggiore by 1537. In 1544, he accepted a post as organist for the Cathedral of Palestrina. While there, he married Lucrezia Gori and met the future Pope Julius III (whom Palestrina honored with the dedication of his First Book of Masses). He returned to Rome in 1551, serving as Master of the Boys for the Vatican's Capella Giulia and then, at Pope Julius' instigation, singing in the Sistine Chapel. Fired by a later Pope because of his marital status, he quickly became choirmaster for Saint John Lateran (a job previously held by Lasso). The 1560s

were a time of great professional development for Palestrina: He served the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Seminario Romano and the wealthy Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, published four more books of music, and turned down an offer to become chapelmaster for the Holy Roman Emperor. His last professional appointment was a long tenure (1571-1594) as master of the Capella Giulia in St. Peter's. In addition, he performed freelance work for at least 12 other Roman churches and institutions, managed his second wife's fur business, and invested in Roman real estate. Palestrina marketed his immense compositional output in nearly 30 published collections during his lifetime; many more of his roughly 700 works survive in manuscripts. He is best known for the 104 masses, though he composed in every other liturgical genre of his day, as well as nearly 100 madrigals. The polished reserve of his style helped fuel the myth first published in 1607 that his Pope Marcellus Mass was written to save polyphony from banishment in the church; the German theorist Fux enthroned his style for centuries to come in his 1725 Gradus ad parnassum.

ORLANDO DI LASSO (Flemish, 1532-1594) Latin Orlandus Lassus, also called Roland De Lassus (born 1530/32, Mons, Spanish Hainautdied June 14, 1594, Munich), Flemish composer whose music stands at the apex of the Franco-Netherlandish style that dominated European music of the Renaissance. Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus was born in Mons and got his start as a choirboy. An often disputed story has the child Lassus kidnapped three times on account of his beautiful singing voice; the only certainty is that by 1544 he had joined the service of Ferrante Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily. A stopover in Mantua allowed Lassus to absorb prevailing Italian influences. Lassus spent less than a year in Sicily and transferred to Milan for the remainder of the 1540s. He often used an Italian form of his name, Orlando di Lasso. In 1551, Lassus was made choirmaster at St. John of Lateran in Rome, but remained only until 1553, being succeeded by Palestrina. Lassus returned to Mons in 1554, receiving word that his parents were ill, but upon his arrival found them already dead and buried. In 1555, Lassus' first book of madrigals and a collection of various secular works appeared simultaneously in Antwerp and Venice, thus beginning his status as a one-man industry of musical publications. Lassus' work accounts for three-fifths of all music printed in Europe between 1555 and 1600. In 1557, the German Duke Albrecht V engaged Lassus' services as a singer at the court in Munich. Lassus' status was upgraded to Kapellmeister in 1561. His position enabled considerable travel, and Lassus made frequent trips to Venice, where he met and made friends with the Gabrielis. Judging from the range of settings, both sacred and secular, coming from Lassus in these years, it is apparent he was asked to supply music for a wide variety of events at the court of Duke Albrecht. The flood of published editions, both authorized and not, of Lassus' music during this time established him as the most popular composer in Europe, and in 1574 he was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by Pope Gregory XIII. In 1579, Duke Albrecht V died, and the longstanding extravagance of his court left his successor, Duke Wilhelm, with little choice but to make deep cuts in the entertainment budget. This had a direct and negative effect on Lassus' fortunes, but nonetheless he declined an offer in 1580 to relocate to the Court at Dresden. By the late 1580s, the number of new pieces Lassus undertook began to

slow down. In the months before his death, Lassus succeeded in bringing to life his last great masterwork, the Lagrime di San Pietro, in itself a summation of the highest forms of Renaissance musical art. He died at about the age of 62, and in 1604 his sons published an edition of his collected works entitled Magnus opus musicum. This was used as the basis for the first modern edition of Lassus' music, published in Leipzig between 1894 and 1926. Among his key works, the Sibylline Prophecies (1553) and Penitential Psalms (1560) reflect the influence of Italian mannerism. While later music contains occasional chromatic alterations, mature Lassus works favor a unique style that combines an intensely dramatic sense of text painting, nervous and excited rhythmic figurations, and glorious, rolling counterpoint. Late works demonstrate a concern for terseness in expression, and texts are realized in a highly compressed state. No verifiable instrumental music is known from Lassus, and his masses are generally considered unfavorably in light of Palestrina's achievement in that realm. But his other worksmotets, madrigals, French chansons, and German liederare considered second to none in the context of the late Renaissance, and several of his secular songs were known from king to peasant in the second half of the sixteenth century.

WILLIAM BYRD (English, 1543-1623)

Even in an era so richly stocked with great names, William Byrd demands particular attention as the most prodigiously talented, prolific, and versatile composer of his contemporaries. Byrd was born in about 1543, and it is assumed that he was a chorister in the Chapel Royal (his brothers were choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral) and a student of Thomas Tallis. He was named organist and master of choristers of Lincoln Cathedral at the age of 20, where he wrote most of his works in English and music for Anglican services. This music and his anthems provided the young English church with some of its finest music. In 1570 he was appointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, where he shared the post of organist with Thomas Tallis. Queen Elizabeth I, despite Byrd's intense commitment to Catholicism, was one of his benefactors, and granted him and Tallis a patent to print music in 1575. Their first publication was a collection of five- to eight-part, Latin motets, but they published little else. Around the same time, Byrd began composing for the virginal. His contribution to the solo keyboard repertoire comprises some 125 pieces, mostly stylized dances or exceptionally inventive sets of variations which inaugurated a golden age of English keyboard composition. During the 1580s and 1590s, Byrd's Catholicism was the driving motive for his music. As the persecutions of Catholics increased during this period, and occasionally touched on Byrd and his family, he wrote and openly published motets and three masses (one each in three, four, and five parts), which are his finest achievement in sacred music, almost certainly composed for small chapel gatherings of Catholics. Byrd had taken up the publishing business again, printing the first English songbook, Psalmes, Sonets and Songs in 1588. This and his other songbooks include Byrd's compositions in the leading secular genres of the day: the ayre or lute song, the madrigal, and the consort song for solo voice and viols. The consort song's finest hour came at the hands of Byrd, who preferred texts of a high moral (frequently religious) or metaphysical tone. They are notable for the way the viol parts lead an existence independent of the vocal line. He openly published two Gradualia in 1605 and 1607, with music for the Propers of all the major feast days. His last

collection, Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets from 1611, consisted mostly of previously published works, but did include two of his viol consort works. Byrd is at his most distinguished in the free fantasias for consort, particularly the later pieces in five and six parts, works of exceptionally luxurious texture. Byrd's last songs were published in 1614, and he lived out his life comfortably at Stondon Massey, where he died in 1623. GIOVANNI GABRIELI (Italian, 1557-1612)

Giovanni Gabrieli is an important transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque eras and their associated musical styles. The distinctive sound of his music derived in part from his association with St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, long one of the most important churches in Europe, and for which he wrote both vocal and instrumental works. Through his compositions and his work with several significant pupils, Gabrieli substantially influenced the development of music in the seventeenth century. Very little is known about his early years; he probably studied with his famous uncle Andrea Gabrieli, who was also a composer, and organist at St. Mark's. Like his uncle, Gabrieli lived in Germany for several years, and was employed at the court of Duke Albrecht V in Munich from around 1575 until the Duke's death in 1579. Soon after that Gabrieli returned to Italy, and in 1585 became the organist for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a religious confraternity; he would hold that post for the rest of his life. That same year (1585), Gabrieli became organist at St. Mark's and, on his uncle's death in 1586, assumed his position as its principal composer (Gabrieli also edited a number of his uncle's compositions for posthumous publication). At that time, Venice was a very cosmopolitan city and something of a musical crossroads. Much of the city's musical activity centered around St. Mark's Cathedral, which had long attracted many great musicians. The Cathedral's unusual layout, with its two choir lofts facing each other (each with its own organ), led to the development of what has been called the Venetian style of composition a colorful and dramatic style often involving multiple choirs and instrumental ensembles; many of Gabrieli's motets and other religious choral works are written for two or four choirs, divided into a dozen or more separate parts. Gabrieli also became one of the first composers to write choral works

including parts for instrumental ensembles; the motet In ecclesiis, as an example, calls for two choirs, soloists, organ, brass, and strings. Gabrieli wrote a number of secular vocal works (most or all of them before 1600), and a number of pieces for organ in a quasi-improvisational style. Gabrieli composed many purely instrumental works in forms such as the canzoni and ricercari, which had become increasingly popular in the sixteenth century. Several of these were published with some of his choral music in the collection Sacrae symphoniae (1597). This publication was very popular all over Europe and attracted for Gabrieli a number of prominent pupils, the best known of which were Heinrich Schtz (who studied with him between 1609 and 1612) and Michael Praetorius. More of Gabrieli's instrumental pieces were published posthumously in Canzoni e sonate (1615). Some of these works were particularly innovative: the Sonata pian e forte was one of the first documented compositions to employ dynamic markings, and the Sonata per tre violini was one of the first to use a basso continuo, anticipating the later trio sonata. His instrumental works are now seen as the culmination of the development of instrumental music in the sixteenth century. From around 1606, Gabrieli suffered from a kidney stone that reduced his activities, and eventually led to his death.