EDWARD LOWINSKY - Music in The Culture of The Renaissance

Music in the Culture of the Renaissance
Author(s): Edward E. Lowinsky

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Oct., 1954), pp. 509-553
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707674
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MUSIC IN THE CULTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE *
EDWARD E. LOWINSKY
Of all cultural manifestations none has been so long and so con-

sistently neglected by the historian of Western civilization as music.
This may have been due on the one hand to the inaccessibility of
early music to the layman and on the other to the preoccupation of
the historian of music with the immediate and gigantic task of tran-
scribing, editing, and analyzing the vast body of music that has come
down to us from the early Middle Ages. The advent of recordings
of old music1 and the beginnings of a musical historiography
centered around the cultural life of the time 2 are slowly initiating a
change which, it may be hoped, will be reflected in the work of the
future historian of civilization.3 The interpretation of the Renais-
sance in particular has been subject to such sharply divergent views,
the clash of opinions has been so violent,4 that the historian of cul-
ture cannot fail to remember that there is one body of evidence he
has not taken into account: that is the evidence of music. He may
seek an answer to these principal questions: does music occupy a
place in Renaissance culture important enough to warrant the as-
sumption that it has something to contribute to the understanding
of that period? If it does, what are the changes and innovations in
the music of the Renaissance and how do they relate to the surround-
ing culture? In other words: what criteria can be established that
will allow a clear differentiation between the music of the Middle
Ages and that of the Renaissance?
* The
following is a somewhat enlarged version of a paper read at the Renais-
sance session of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in De-
cember 1952 on the invitation and under the chairmanship of Prof. Wallace K.
Ferguson. A revised version was also read to the University Seminar on the Ren-
aissance at Columbia University in May 1953.
1 The most comprehensive and responsible collection available thus far is the
Anthologie Sonore, ed. Curt Sachs. The recordings of medieval and Renaissance
music by Pro Musica Antiqua (Safford Cape) deserve special recommendation.
2 To mention only a few works we refer the reader to H. Besseler, Musik des
Mittelalters und der Renaissance, Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft (Potsdam,
1931). P. H. Lang, Music in Western Civilization (New York, 1941). A. Ein-
stein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1949). This approach goes back
to Ambros' Geschichte der Musik (1862-68) and Winterfeld's Joh. Gabrieli und
sein Zeitalter (1834).
3 After these lines were written, The Mind of the Middle Ages (200-1500)
by
Frederick B. Artz (New York, 1953) appeared, one of the few books that attempt
to give music its place in the unfolding of medieval civilization.
4 See Wallace K.
Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, Five Cen.
turies of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1948).
509
510 EDWARD E. LOWINSKY
Chronologically, a good case can be made for a rough delimitation

of the music of the Renaissance to the period of 1450-1600. In so
doing the music historian is faced with the problem of how to in-
terpret the period from 1300-1450. It cannot be denied that around
1300 a clear and unmistakable break occurred in the development of
music, a turn so obvious that the musicians of that time themselves
felt compelled to speak of an "ars nova." This is the title of the
treatise on music written c. 1320 by the French musician and poet
Philippe de Vitry,5 friend of Petrarch. This is probably the first
time in Western music that musicians speak of a "modern art."
The "ars nova" of the Trecento has enough elements in common
with both medieval and Renaissance concepts that its interpretation
either as late Middle Ages or as early Renaissance can be defended
on good grounds. In order to establish clear criteria we will con-
centrate on the more mature period between 1450 and 1600. With
the analytical tools thus prepared we may then return to a brief
examination of the Renaissance elements in the music of the
Trecento. To press such an analysis into the confines of one paper
necessitates a view at which distances shrink and differences are re-
duced to the most fundamental outlines. It would take a book to
describe what is left out.6 But we are here not concerned with de-
scription but with an analysis of the significance of musical
phenomena within the culture of Renaissance society.
Geographically, the Netherlands (then including northern France,
Belgium, and Holland) and Italy are the leading nations in music
from 1450-1600, as they are in the visual arts. France proper, Ger-
many, England, and Spain compete for second place, while Switzer-
land, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Portugal, and other smaller centers
of music are on the periphery.
The steady rise of music in the fifteenth century is reflected in
the reorganization and consolidation of the great musical establish-
ments and in the increasing number and prestige of the musicians
employed. I will illustrate this with data from two vital centers of
Renaissance music, the Papal Choir in Rome and the famous choir
of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp.
The Papal Choir in Rome had ten singers in 1442.7 In 1483 their
5 For the most recent literature on de
Vitry as poet and his circle of friends
see D. W. Robertson, Jr., "The 'Partitura Amorosa' of Jean de Savoie," in
Philological Quarterly XXXIII (1954), 1-9.
6 Cf. Gustave
Reese, Music of the Renaissance (New York, 1954), a magnificent
achievement.
7 See for the following F. X. Haberl, " Die r6mische 'Schola cantorum' und
die papstlichen Kapellsanger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts," Vierteljahrs-
MUSIC IN RENAISSANCE CULTURE 511
number had increased to 24, in the years following and throughout

the sixteenth century the membership fluctuated, rising at times to
30 singers, but holding usually more closely to 24, which number
came to be regarded as the ideal size for the Papal Choir. Besides, in
1480, another musical institution was founded in Rome which, under
Pope Julius II, became known as the Capella Giulia and which
functioned in the Basilica of St. Peter. By its use of the organ it
was distinguished from the Papal Choir functioning for the Papal
court in the Sistine chapel, where no instruments were allowed to
intrude upon the sacred services. As the number of singers grew,
their privileges increased. Pope Eugenius IV created the economic
foundation for the Papal Choir with his bull Et si erga of 1444 in
which the income of the singers from benefices, prebends and
canonries, as distinguished from their monthly salaries, was
stabilized. The Papal singers were to be preferred in their claims on
such ecclesiastical benefices to any other claimants. Under Pope
Nicholas V (1447-55) their salary was increased from 5 to 8 ducats
monthly. Under every new incoming Pope the privileges of the
Papal singers were confirmed in a new bull and substantial amplifi-
cations were added. Under Innocent VIII (1484-92) certain pro-
visions were made which illuminate the actual situation through the
prohibitions proposed: a Papal singer shall not keep a concubine,
he shall not frequent taverns and other inhonesta loca, he shall al-
ways appear in his choir gown, and he shall not wear his hair down
to the neck. The same document provides that cardinals shall not
keep in their houses trumpeters, other musicians, buffoons, and
clowns.
At the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp 8 we find a similar
development in the fifteenth century, with the difference, however,
that the Antwerp establishment surpassed the Papal Choir in size
and magnificence and that its reorganization preceded that of Rome
by about one generation. In an edict of 1410, Pope John XXIII
granted the chapter's request to have the revenues of 12 prebends
reserved for singers and the distribution made solely on the basis of
musical merit. This edict paved the way for the engagement of lay
singers, whereas previously singers could be selected from the ranks
of priests only. It means, in other words, the admission of the pro-
8 The data on Antwerp are based in part on my excerpts from the transcrip-
tions of records made by Leon de Burbure, one-time archivist of the Cathedral.
De Burbure's vast literary estate is today in the City Hall of Antwerp. I gave a
sketch of the music in Antwerp in a paper on The Musical Life of a Flemish City
in the 16th Century read before the New York Chapter of the American Musico-
logical Society, Feb., 1947 (see abstract in Bulletin of the American Musicological
Society [1948], 23).
fessional musician into the church service. Needless to say, this

gave rise to a great improvementin the musical services. In 1443
the Cathedralboasted 51 singers; in 1480, 63; in 1549, 69.9 Adult
males sang not only the bass and tenor parts, but also, through
special training in falsetto singing, the alto part. The soprano was
sung by choir boys, whose numbergrew from six to twelve between
1401 and 1445. They lived in the house of the magister choralium,
who was responsiblefor their musical education and received pay-
ment from special funds for their upkeep, while the magister gram-
matices took care of the boys' humanisticeducation. To the singers
must be added the organist and the player of the carillons. The
figures mentioned reflect two facts: that Antwerp in the fifteenth
century was slowly rising to the position it occupied throughoutthe
first sixty years of the sixteenth century as the richest industrialcity
of Europe, and that Flanders was the leading center in Western
music and the creative force behind the great development of the
art of counterpointand choral singing of the Renaissance. The in-
crease in the number of singers was accompaniedby an increase in
salaries, privileges, gratuities, in brief, by a steady rise in the eco-
nomic and social position of the singers in Rome and Antwerp.
Musical organizations such as the establishments at Rome and
Antwerp served as models for smaller organizationsin other towns
and countries. They were responsible for the marvellous develop-
ment of churchmusic throughoutthe Renaissance. The great serv-
ices, in particular High Mass and Vespers, were celebrated to the
accompanimentof polyphonic masses, motets, hymns, magnificats,
Marian antiphons. No expenses were spared for composers,singers,
and instrumentalistsfor the celebrationof the high holidays, espe-
cially Easter. It is well to rememberthe social characterof church
functions and church music at the time. On important political
occasions, at receptions of foreign dignitaries, the celebrationof a
Solemn Mass was inevitable; a Te Deum would invariably be sung
after a victoriousbattle, at the conclusionof a treaty, at the joyous
9 The number of singers at the Cathedral of Antwerp surpasses by far that
customary in other churches. I wonder whether this has something to do with the
strange practice of celebrating several offices in the Cathedral at the same time
because of the vastness of the edifice. At least this is what Albrecht Diirer, in the
diary of his Flemish journey (1520-21), reports: Die Frauenkirche zu Antorff (Ant-
werp) ist uebergross, also dass man viel Amt auf einmal darinnen singt, dass keins
das andere irrt. Und haben allda kostliche Stiftungen, da sind bestellt die besten
Musici, die man haben mag. (Quoted by H. Kretzschmar in Musikgeschichtliche
Stichproben aus deutscher Laienliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts, in Festschrift fiir
R. v. Liliencron [Leipzig, 1910], 119).
occasion of the arrival of a royal heir; during wartime a Da pacem

Domine in diebus nostris would be sung in solemn procession, and
indeed we have innumerable compositions based on the text and
melody of this antiphon throughout the sixteenth century.
At the wedding of Costanzo Sforza with Camilla of Aragon in
1475 there was celebrated, according to a description printed in that
same year, a triumphal Mass with organs, flutes, trumpets, numerous
tambourines, and with two choirs, each of 16 singers, that sang in
alternation.l0
It is from contemporary records of this kind that we learn of such
unorthodox performances of a Mass with two alternating choirs,
wood and brass instruments and-most surprising-with tam-
bourines. The choirbooks of the time consist of vocal parts only,
leaving participation of instruments to the discretion of the choir-
master and the resources available to him. The theorists are silent
about such practical questions. They concentrate on problems of
notation and counterpoint. The use of tambourines for dance music
is attested to by paintings of the time. Expense accounts of the
Illustre Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap at 'sHertogenbosch for 1531-32
published by Albert Smijers11 refer to a payment for diverse
musicians "met tamboreynen en herpen" during a procession for
Our Lady. But tambourines in the performance of a solemn Mass
reveal a secular gaiety invading the sacred sphere that-together
with the practice of basing a polyphonic Mass on worldly ditties-
goes a long way in explaining the increasingly bitter complaints
about the profanation of church music throughout the sixteenth
century which culminated in the strictures and regulations of the
Council of Trent.
Religious music was not limited to the Church. In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries a great number of lay congregations were
founded. The impact of these lay congregations not only on spirit-
0 The imprint of 1475, which I studied in Florence, was reprinted by B.
Gamba (Venice, 1836). Otto Kinkeldey quoted the report of this extraordinary
performanceof a solemn Mass in his Orgel und Klavier in der Musik des 16.
Jahrhunderts(Leipzig, 1910), 165-6. He interpretsthe tamburinias kettledrums.
The Italian term for kettledrum is tamburo; it occurs frequently in Italian in-
ventories of instruments from the 16th century (cf. G. Turrini, L'Accademia
Filarmonicadi Verona [Verona, 1941], 26, 41, 180, 188). I am inclinedtherefore
to interpret tamburinias tambourines. With regard to the mention of alternat-
ing choirsso long before Willaert,see H. Besseler,Musik des Mittelaltersund der
Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931), 217-8, and examplesin M. F. Bukofzer,Studies in
Medievaland RenaissanceMusic (New York, 1950), 182-4. Cf. also note 53.
11See Tijdschrift,Vereenigingvoor NederlandscheMuziekgeschiedenis XVI, 87.
ual but also on artistic and musical development is far from being
fully explored. They usually owned a chapel within one of the
larger churches of the town and were devoted to the Virgin Mary or
to a particular Saint. One of the most brilliant congregations was
the Confraternity of Our Lady in Antwerp whose membership was
made up of the wealthy merchants, bankers, and artisans of that
city. The charter of the Confraternity was written in 1482; it pro-
vided for a daily service to be celebrated between 5 and 6 o'clock in
the evening by four singers, twelve choirboys, the choirmaster, an
organist, and a priest. The service was preceded by ringing of the
church bells and playing of the carillons, still today a specialty of
the Netherlands. Before and after the singing the organist played
on the organ. During the service he played in support of or in al-
ternation with the choir. In 1506 the Confraternity installed in the
Chapel of Our Lady its own magnificent organ and engaged its own
organist. From the account books it appears that the musical serv-
ice of the Confraternity differed from that of the cathedral in that
it had only a small choir, but favored the extensive participation of
instrumental music, especially of wind instruments, whereas the
cathedral ordinarily employed only the organ in support of its large
choir.
In Italy there was a similar movement whose antecedents were
the medieval congregations called Laudesi, the singers of the Lauda,
a spiritual song in the vernacular. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries artisan guilds organized themselves in a manner similar to
the confraternities in the North. Sansovino, in his Annotazioni al
Novelliero del Boccaccio (Venice, 1546) describes their services as
follows: "In Florence there are several guilds of artisans, among
them the guild of Or San Michele and S. Maria Novella. Every
Saturday after Nones they gather in Church and sing there five or
six lauds or ballades for four voices [on texts] composed by Lorenzo
de Medici, Pulci, and Giambullari and after each laud the singers
change and when they have finished they unveil, to the accompani-
ment of organ playing and singing, the picture of the Madonna, and
herewith the ceremony is ended."
Obviously the modest musical service of the Florentine artisan
guilds celebrated only once a week cannot compare with the splendor
of the daily vesper service for choir, organ, and instruments in-
stituted by the wealthy merchants of the Antwerp Confraternity.
A similar magnificence can be found, however, in the Italian aristo-
cratic academies flourishing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Different academies were devoted to different aims. But in many of
them music played an essential,in some of them a central,role. The

AccademiaFilarmonicaof Verona,founded on the 1st of May 1543,
still preserves today a marvellous collection of instruments and of
music written and printed in addition to detailed inventories and
recordsdating back to the earliest days of its existence.l2 Founded
for the express purpose of cultivating music, the Academy engaged
famous composersand instrumentalistswho were to teach the 29
selected members. The composerhad to be available for private
teaching of the members every day after Nones, he had to set to
music whatever text the Academicianswould select. The Academy
met weekly for a kind of Collegiummusicum from which strangers
were excluded. On special occasions such as May 1, the day of
foundation, and during carnival, there would be performancesfor a
widerpublic on the basis of invitations issued. The two main differ-
ences between the Antwerp confraternityand the VeroneseAcademy
are that the Academy was primarily devoted to the cultivation of
secular music as compared to the religious nature of the musical
performancesin Antwerp, and that the Academicianshad to occupy
themselves with musical compositionand performance,whereas the
confraternityin Antwerp engaged performersfrom outside its own
ranks. The significanceof the Italian academies for the flowering
of Cinquecento music in that country was well recognized at the
time. Pietro Cerone of Bergamo wrote in his great musical com-
pendium (El melopeo y maestro) of 1613 3 ". .. in many cities of
Italy there are several houses called 'academies,' which are solely
places of reunion for singers, players, and composers, who de-
vote themselves to their art for two or three hours [. .] 14 The most
famous mastersof the town usually take part in them, and after the
performanceof their most recent compositionsand the termination
of the concert usually discuss some musical problem on which oc-
casion everyonesets forth his opinion in a pleasant mannerand con-
cludes his discussionswith profit to all." The French " academiede
poesie et musique" founded by Baif in 1570 and preceded by the
Pleiade led by Ronsard and by Jean Dorat's academy was un-
doubtedly influencedby Italian models. Its officialpurpose was the
restorationof music in the sense of the ancient Greeks. Naturally,
1 Giuseppe Turrini, LAccademia Filarmonicadi Verona (Verona, 1941).
13Quoted by A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, 3 vols. (Princeton, 1949), I,
199.
14Here Einstein adds [" a day."] From the statutes of the AccademiaFilar-
monica in Verona it would appear that the gatherings there took place once a
week; see Turrini,op. cit., 19.
the model for the academieswas the Platonic academy in Florence

at the time of Lorenzode Medici. Marsilio Ficino, its guiding spirit,
believed that music was for the soul what medicinewas for the body.
In his De vita sana he recommendedquiet and harmoniousmusic
for voice and lyre whenever the soul is out of tune and beset by
melancholy ("Mercurius, Pythagoras, Plato iubent dissonantem
animam vel moerentem cithara cantuque tam constanti quam con-
cinno componere simul atque erigere "). Ficino himself loved to
sing and to improviseto the accompanimentof his lyre in the circle
of the academy.1
The greatest centers for the cultivation of secularmusic were the
numerouscourts in Italy, the kingdoms, duchies, and the patrician
homes of the cities. It is characteristicthat the Netherlands with
its paucity of courts and its multitude of churchesand congregations
led in churchmusic, while Italy with its many independentpolitical
centers and its academiesled in the development of secular music.
We have many reportson the role of music in the social life of the
Italian courts. The most famous is contained in Baldessar Castig-
lione's II Cortegiano of 1528. Well-known is his description of
courtly music, his insistence that the courtierhimself be able to sing
and to play but that he wait for the right time and the right com-
pany and engage in performingmusic and using the instrumentsbe-
fitting his nobility. It does not behoove the courtier to use wind
instruments. The noble instrument par excellence is the viol and
the sweetest music is that produced by a quartet of viols. Har-
monious also are the keyboard instruments. Ensemble singing is
praised, but much to be preferredis solo song with the accompani-
ment of a viol. The right occasion for music making is when dear
friends meet in company and no other business is at hand, and es-
pecially when ladies are present, for their aspect softens the soul of
the listener and makes it more accessibleto the sweetness of music,
and it also fires the spirit of the musician.
Nicola Vicentino writes in his musical treatise L'antica musica
ridotta alla moderna prattica of 1555 on the vocal and instrumental
chambermusic performedat the court of Ferrara. Of his many fine
points I single out one, that chamber music be produced with in-
timate and soft tone as against the massive sonority of Church or
open air music. Luigi Dentice, a Neapolitan aristocrat,published in
15Cf. A. della Torre, Storia dell'AccademiaPlatonica di Firenze (Florence,
1902), 788ff. See also F. A. Yates, The French Academiesof the Sixteenth Cen-
tury (London, 1947), and P. 0. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino
(New York, 1943).
1553 his Duo Dialoghi della Musica in which he gave delightful de-
tails of the private concerts of singers and players in the house of
Donna Giovanna of Aragon in Naples. Famous were the concerts of
the Venetian aristocratic lady "Pecorina" which were directed by
the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert, choirmaster at San Marco
from 1527 on, and commonly, if exaggeratedly,"6 referred to as
founder of the Venetian school of music. In 1594 Bottrigari, a noble-
man of Bologna, who was from 1575-85 in Ferrara, reports in II
Desiderio about the "concerto grande" in Ferrara at which every
conceivable instrument was employed together with a great number
of singers. He also tells about the marvelous concerts presented by
23 nuns of San Vito in Ferrara, under the direction of a nun. Here,
too, voices and all kinds of instruments were employed. But Bottri-
gari does not fail to inform us also about the lovely vocal serenades
performed by humble lay congregations in the dark streets of
Bologna on warm summer evenings. That the populace itself was
deeply imbued with the love of music we know not only from such
enthusiastic accounts of Flemish popular music making as given
by Guicciardini in his Descrittione de tutti i Paesi Bassi in 1567,
or from Marin Sanuto's diaries which tell of the street ballads heard
in Venice; 17 we know it also from the statutes of Flemish guilds of
musicians.18 These statutes make it amply clear that there was a
tremendous demand for music for weddings, for dancing, for car-
nival, for the yearly fair, for processions and a number of other oc-
casions. Literary documents, or paintings and miniatures depicting
popular scenes with singers and instrumentalists, offer interesting
sidelights on the intimate connection of music with the life of the
people.
Obviously, the actual folk-song of the Renaissance has largely
died out, for it is in the nature of folk-music to live in oral tradition.
Some folk-songs can still be traced in the secular polyphonic art
forms, especially in the Italian frottola.l1 It is a matter of specula-
16See the preface of G. Benvenuti to his Andrea e Giovanni Gabrieli e la
Musica Strumentalein San Marco, in Istituzioni e Monumentidell'ArteMusicale
Italiana, I (Milan, 1931). Cf. also Giovannid'Alessi,"Precursorsof AdrianoWil-
laert in the Practice of Coro Spezzato,"in Journal of the AmericanMusicological
Society V (1952), 210.
17A. Einstein, op. cit., I, 85. 18Cf. L. de Burbure, Apercu sur l'ancienne
corporationdes MusiciensInstrumentistesd'Anversdite De Saint-Jobet de Sainte
Marie Madeleine,in Bulletins de l'AcademieRoyale de Belgique,31eme annee, 2me
serie, XIII (Bruxelles,1862).
19Cf. Knud Jeppesen, "Venetian Folk-Songs of the Renaissance,"in Papers
read at the InternationalCongressof Musicologyheld at New York, 1939 (1944),
62ff., and A. Einstein, The Italian Madrigal (op. cit.), I, 83ff.
tion how many of the secular melodies that composers immortalized

by writing a whole polyphonic Mass on them were folk-songs. But
there is an interesting layer of music that moves between the popu-
lar and the art sphere, music that is, in the words of Richard L.
Greene, "popular by destination." Greene used that felicitous ex-
pression with reference to the English carols. A British publisher
has recently issued the first complete edition of about 120 carols of
the fifteenth century preserved with music.20 In these simple two
and three part songs, mostly on vernacular texts with Latin inter-
spersed, we have a precious record of what certain modern publishers
would call "semi-popular" music. Recently I learned of the exist-
ence of a Belgian manuscript written between 1495 and 1505 which
contains Flemish and Latin rhymed texts of a spiritual nature set to
music in a tuneful, but contrapuntally very primitive style, mostly
for two and three, a few for four voices-the first document un-
covered that proves that something akin to the carols existed in
Flanders.21 The Lochamer Liederbuch shows a somewhat different
but comparable genre in Germany, and in Italy we have the tradition
of the Laudesi, monodic in the Middle Ages,22 polyphonic in the
Renaissance.23
There is one important social institution which we have not
mentioned and of which I will again give two examples, one in
Antwerp, the other in Venice. The account books of the city of
Antwerp show that the city employed regularly five town musicians,
all instrumentalists. From inventories of the first half of the six-
teenth century we can see that the town musicians had to be experts
on a great many instruments. According to an inventory drawn up
in 1531 the town owned 28 flutes, 19 cromornes, three trumpets, a
field trumpet, a tenor fife, one alto and one tenor shawm. In 1548
payments were made for repairing the city's viols. Since the Flemish
book-keepers were animated by the same love of detail for which
the Flemish painters are justly famous we know the function of the
20Mediaeval Carols, ed. by John Stevens. Musica Britannica, IV (London,
Stainer & Bell, Ltd., 1952).
21 Cf. Fred. Lyna, "Een teruggevonden handschrift," in Tijdschrift voor
Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, deel XLIII, 289-323. I owe my acquaint-
ance with this interesting manuscript to the kindness of Mr. E. Geeurickx of
Opwijk, Belgium, who has prepared a modern edition. We hope he will succeed
in finding a publisher for his work.
22F. Liuzzi, La Lauda e i Primordi della Melodia Italiana, 2 vols. (Rome,
1935). 23K. Jeppesen, Die mehrstimmige Italienische Lauda um 1500 (Copen-
hagen-Leipzig, 1935).
town musicians very well. They appeared at all receptions of digni-

taries; they played at the colorful processions of the city; on the
evenings of holidays they played on the tower of the Cathedral; they
were indispensable at all official banquets. In 1483 the custom was
introduced for the town musicians to perform evening music daily
in the town hall, most likely from the tower. Besides, on holidays
they joined the singers in the cathedral in the performance of solemn
musical services and their names appear constantly in the account
books of the Congregation of Our Lady at the cathedral in Antwerp.
Unfortunately, there are no records left that would give us
similarly exact accounts of the musicians employed by the Signoria
in Venice. The reason given 24 for the fact that neither singers nor
players are mentioned in the Atti di Procurati is that their engage-
ment was left to the choirmaster at San Marco. But in the Atti of
1567 25 the name of Girolamo da Udine, famed cornet player, appears
as leader of the instrumentalists in the employment of the Republic
of Venice. Silvestro Ganassi, the author of the earliest treatise on
the art of flute playing, published in 1535 in Venice, calls himself in
the title of his book "sonator d(e) La Ill(ustrissi)-ma S(ignori)a
d(i) V(enezi)a." The woodcut adorning the title page shows five
musicians-the same number as that employed by the city of
Antwerp-three of them playing the recorder, one singing, and the
fifth holding a recorder in one hand and keeping the other hand on
the table, lifting his forefinger as if he were giving light indication of
tempo and meter. From Venetian paintings and from contemporary
chroniclers we know that the instrumentalists were employed mainly
for the many festive processions on the Square of San Marco. A
painting of 1496 by Bellini 26 of a solemn procession on San Marco's
Square reveals participation of nine singers and at least seven players
of wind instruments. Undoubtedly, the institution of the town pipers
goes back at least to the fourteenth century. A notarial act of 1310
gives evidence of the existence of five town pipers (four tubatores
and one trombetta) employed by the city of Lucca.27
Archives, chronicles, and paintings from all over Europe demon-
strate that the town musicians were a universal social institution
rooted in the Middle Ages but mainly developed in the Renaissance.
24 Francesco
Caffi, Storia della Musica Sacra nella gia Cappella Ducale di San
Marco in Venezia (Venice, 1855), II, 25. 25 Ibid., 56.
26 See for a reproduction Istituzioni e Monumenti dell'Arte Musicale Italiana,
I (1931).
27 The act is transcribed in its entirety by Luigi Nerici in his Storia della
Musica in Lucca (Lucca, 1897), 39-40.
In England they were called " waits," 28 a name derived from their
original function as watchmen who "piped watch" at stated hours
of the night. Of course, the public recordsare silent on the role of
music in private homes, but there are many other sourcesthat testify
to the intense love and cultivation of music in the patricianhouses of
Flanders, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England. Among these
sourcesare especially dedicationsand prefacesof imprints of secular
music, literary documents, writings on music, and again paintings,
drawings,and etchings of family life which show the institution of
the family ensemble. The immense literature of French chansons,
Italian and English madrigals,the GermanLied, the Spanish villan-
cico, the Flemish song is a vivid testimony to the art of musical en-
semble cultivated in the privacy of the Renaissance home. Of the
many documents available I will quote one passage only from the
beginning of Thomas Morley's dialogue entitled A Plain and Easy
Introduction to Practical Music published in London in 1597 (new
edition by R. A. Harman [New York, 1952]). There Philomates
tells his brother Polymathes that he had been, the night before, at
the banquet of Master Sophobuluswhere-and I continue in his own
words-" by chance master Aphron came thither also, who, falling
to discourseof music was in argumentso quickly taken up and hotly
pursuedby Eudoxus and Calergus,two kinsmenof Sophobulus,as in
his own art he was overthrown;but he still sticking to his opinion,
the two gentlemen requestedme to examine his reasonsand confute
them; but I refusing and pretendingignorance,the whole company
condemnedme of discourtesy,being fully persuadedthat I had been
as skilful in that art as they took me to be learned in others. But
supperbeing ended and musicbooks(accordingto the custom) being
brought to the table, the mistress of the house presentedme with a
part earnestlyrequestingme to sing but when, after many excuses, I
protested unfeignedly that I could not, everyone began to wonder:
yea, some whisperedto others demandinghow I was brought up, so
that upon shame of my ignorance I go now to seek out mine old
friend Master Gnorimus,to make myself his scholar."
On our brief tour of the musical institutions of the Renaissance
we have seen how each institution served a differentsocial function
and how this differenceof function was responsiblefor the difference
28See L. G. Langwill, The Waits, A Short Historical Study, in Hinrichsen's
Musical Year Book, VII (London, 1952), 170-183. By far the best presentation
of the subject is found in W. L. Woodfill's Musicians in English Society (Prince-
ton, 1953; see esp. chs. 2 and 4). For France see Frangois Lesure, "La com-
munaute des 'Joueurs d'instruments' au XVIe siecle," Revue hist. de droit
franqais et etranger (1953), 79-109.
of musical forms and styles. The church choir cultivates the great
liturgical forms of music with Latin text: the Proper and the Ordi-
nary of the Mass; the congregations share in this repertory, but con-
centrating on the vesper service, they emphasize the Marian anti-
phons, Magnificats,29 hymns and motets appropriate to the liturgical
character of that service. In the humbler congregations and in some
of the more popular processions the vernacular creeps in and spreads
out in the form of the English carol, the Italian lauda, the French
psalm, the Flemish spiritual song and the later Flemish psalm, the
so-called souterliedeken. At court and in the aristocratic home, in
the academies and in the houses of patricians a secular art in the
vernacular flourishes, the ever present urge to dance has produced
a varied literature of dance music: the basse danse, the pavane, the
gaillarde, the branle, ronde, and allemande. The musically illiterate,
too, had their own songs and dances, as we know from literary, pic-
torial, and, in small part, from musical sources. Even the choice of
instruments was sociologically and functionally influenced. The
principal instrument used in the church service was the organ, wind
instruments participated on high holidays. The lay congregations
on the other hand cultivated instrumental music and in Antwerp
the town musicians were employed regularly for the daily vesper
service of the Congregation of Our Lady. In Venice, where most
state functions were celebrated in the open air, trumpets, cornets,
trombones as well as recorders were used. But for the indoor enter-
tainments of the aristocratic society of Italian courts string instru-
ments were preferred. Similarly, Venice with its tradition of public
and state affairs loved choral performances and gave a prominent
place to double choir polyphony, whereas the courts withdrawn from
the common world and emphasizing the uncommon individual be-
came centers of accompanied solo song and solo play. The courts of
the Renaissance were the cradles of vocal and instrumental virtu-
osity. But virtuosity was more than mere technique, it was closely
allied with the art of improvisation. The singers improvised their
embellishments, the lute virtuoso improvised on well-known tunes,
and the best among them appealed not only to the senses but to the
emotions. Francesco Milano is said to have thrown his listeners into
29 The polyphonic setting of the Magnificat was an innovation of the Renais-
sance. The earliest polyphonic Magnificats were composed in the 15th century.
It would be worth while to investigate whether there was a connection between the
celebration of the vesper service by lay congregations and the emergence and in-
creasing popularity of the polyphonic Magnificat, or whether the latter may be
ascribed to the greater emphasis on the vesper services in the 15th and 16th cen-
turies in general. Both factors may have contributed.
a state of ecstasy and to have played on the scale of their emotions

as surely as he did on the strings of his lute. The miraculouseffects
ascribedto music by the ancient Greeks,the legends of Amphionand
Orpheus,the stories of Pythagoras, Plato's belief in the corrupting
and ennobling powers of music, all were constantly in the minds of
the Renaissancemusicians. They were subjects of serious study, of
passionate debate, and of continued attempts at modern revival.
II
Surely, where the musical life is so intense and so intimately re-
lated to the social life there must be many ways to demonstratethe
union of life and art in the Renaissance. The most obvious is found
in the texts which were set to music. Since Renaissancemusic is for
the greatest and most importantpart vocal music the choice of texts
is in itself highly revealing. A history of changingstyles, tastes, and
fashions, a history of religiousfeeling, of literary evolution and even
an abbreviatedhistory of political events could be gleaned-at least
in outline-by a mere study of the texts Renaissancecomposersset
to music.
If none of the paintings of Venus by the Italian masters of the
Renaissancehad survived we would know of their existence through
that charming Latin motet by the great Cipriano de Rore,30com-
poser at the court of Ferrara. Here Venus is pictured wandering
through Italy and coming to the duchy of Ferrara. Discovering a
painted likeness of herself she bursts into tears of bitter jealousy:
quid iuvat esse deam-" what good is it to be a goddess,if mortals
can render my beauty feature for feature."
If we had lost all other recordsof the religious developmentsof
the sixteenth century we would have the powerful witnesses of the
Lutheran, Calvinist, Huguenot, Anglican musical services in their
respective languages. We would know something of the tremendous
hatred engenderedby Luther'sbreakwith the Churchfrom the motet
text: Te Luterum damnamus,te hereticum confitemur,te errorum
patrem omnis terra detestatur. Tibi justi et universe religiones,tibi
clerici . . .proclamant Dirus dirus dirus dirus blasfemus in deum
sabaoth .... The text continues to heap such epithets as adulterius
apostata maledictus, etc., on the Reformer's head. This motet,
found in a Bolognese manuscript of the first half of the sixteenth
century31composedby "Matre Jan" (- Maistre Jhan), can serve
30 11
terzo libro di Motetti a 5 voci di Cipriano Rore (Venice, 1549), no. 4. Cf.
my Das Antwerpener Motettenbuch Orlando di Lassos und seine Beziehungen zum
Motettenschaffen der niederldndischen Zeitgenossen (The Hague, 1937).
31 Bologna, Liceo Musicale, Ms. Q.27, fo. lOv-llv.
as an example of the constant need of reconstructing the historical

context which the music alone can merely hint at. This Italian motet
against Luther is a unique case, as far as I know. Only a very unique
situation can have produced it. Though the personality and life of
Maistre Jhan are shrouded in obscurity we know that he was choir-
leader at the court of Ercole II, duke of Ferrara. In 1528 the duke
married Renee de France, who was a passionate believer in the Ref-
ormation. She opened her castle as a refuge to Reformed artists
and men persecuted because of their adherence to the Reformation.
The increasing severity of the struggle between the old and the new
faith made a crisis between Ercole and Renee inevitable. In 1536,
the year in which Calvin himself spent almost two months in Fer-
rara, Ercole removed all of Renee's proteges from his court. At the
same time attempts were made to lead Renee back to the old faith.
These efforts failed. After her husband's death in 1559 Renee re-
turned to France where she openly espoused the Reformed cause.
I suggest that Maitre Jhan was commissioned by the duke, not be-
fore 1536, to set the violently anti-Lutheran text to music. We may
assume that the duke created an occasion at which Renee was sur-
prised with the performance of this motet, possibly in the presence
of some of the theologians and high officials of the Church called by
Ercole to aid in her reconversion. We may imagine with what differ-
ing emotions the parties to the dispute listened to the performance
of the motet.
But aside from external events an eloquent witness to the change
in religious feeling within the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church
is the change of the text repertory of the motet. Throughout the
fifteenth century the celebration of the liturgical times of the day
and the year, the adoration of the Virgin and of the Saints, and the
story of Salvation stood in the center of the texts set to music.
Starting in the last decades of the fifteenth and throughout the six-
teenth century there is a significant and increasingly sharp shift
from the objective world of hieratic symbolism to the subjective
realm of man's relation to God in the face of sin, suffering, and death.
It is not by chance that the motet texts deal time and again with
great figures in the depth of despair: Job, David mourning the death
of Jonathan or the death of Absalom, innocent Susanna facing
calumny and death, Rachel weeping over her lost children, the
Prodigal Son, and especially Christ suffering on the Cross-the poly-
phonic passion as well as the passion motet are creations of the
Renaissance. For the first time in the history of polyphonic music 32
32 In the Middle Ages the
passion was presented in dramatic form and partly
spoken, partly sung in Plain Chant.
the figureof the sufferingChrist comes to occupy a place comparable

in significance,if not in quantity, to the musical depiction of the
Virgin in the blessed moment of the Annunciation. Now the in-
numerable compositions of the Ave Maria, the Salve Regina, the
Regina coeli are joined not only by the Stabat Mater dolorosa but
also by passion motets like the one by Josquin des Prez: 0 Domine
Jesu Christe, adoro te in cruce pendentem. The German publisher
JohannesOtto of Nuremberg33refers to that motet by Josquin when
he exclaims in the preface of one of his editions of 1538:
Quis pictor eam Christi faciem What painter could express Christ's
supplitijs mortis subiecti exprimere suffering in the hour of torture and
tam graphice potuit quam modis death as graphically as did Josquin
musicis eam expressit JOSQUINUS. with musical means!
Very conspicuousis the use of psalm texts and especially psalms

of despairand contrition in the motet literature of the Renaissance,
starting with Josquin about 1490 and continuing right through the
sixteenth century.
On the other hand the Renaissance composer began to occupy
himself with setting to music the verses of the Song of Songs. The
increasinglyfree and passionatestyle used in these compositionssug-
gests that many musicians substituted an earthly image for the
allegoricalone which officialinterpretationattached to it.
There exists, naturally, a multitude of compositions celebrating
the birthdays and weddings of emperors, kings, dukes, and noble
citizens. There are numerousfuneral motets mourningthe death of
people of rank. There are compositionsreferringto political events:
war, peace treaties, political negotiations,meetings of political poten-
tates. In Rome I discovereda manuscript,entirely unknownbefore,
whose origin could be traced to Florence between 1527 and 1530. A
number of texts deal with the events leading to and happening dur-
ing the siege of that city, when Florentine Republicansmade a last
heroic attempt to throw off the yoke of the Medici.34
Not only does the range of texts set to music broadenimmensely,
they reveal with a new degreeof sharpnessthe changesin the mental
climate of the age. The restlessnessand disenchantmentof the late
Renaissanceare mirroredvividly in texts of a stoic and even cynical
nature. Susato of Antwerppublishesin 1546 a motet on the text:
33 See the preface to the Secundus Tomus Novi Operis Musici (1538).
34 See my study on " A Newly Discovered Motet MS in the Bibl. Vallicelliana
in Rome," Journal of the American Musicological Society (1951), 173-232.
35Liber secundus sacrarum cantionum quinque vocum (Antwerp . . . 1546),
no. 16 (the concluding piece).
Decipimur votis tempore fallimur We are deluded by promises. Time

Mors deridet curas anxia vita deceives us. Death laughs at worries.
nihil. Anxious life is nothing.
A similar sentiment characteristic of the pessimism of the Counter-
Reformation is voiced even more briefly in the text set to music by
Orlando di Lasso and published posthumously in 1597:
Mortalium iucunditas volucris The pleasure of mortals is transitory
et pendula. and elusive.
Already at the beginning of the century ancient poetry had ap-

peared on the musical scene. The odes of Horace were set to music
by the Swiss humanist Glareanus,36 by Petrus Tritonius in his
Melopoeae of 1507, by Hofhaimer, Senfl, and others. Vergil's verses
on Dido abandoned by faithless Aeneas inspired a whole series of
motet-like compositions by composers of the Renaissance37 and a
number of operas by composers of the Baroque.
It was characteristic of the Middle Ages that its greatest com-
posers, men like Leonin and Perotin, did not sign their names to their
compositions; we know them only from the testimony of contem-
porary theorists. In the Renaissance a number of works are still
ascribed to the fertile composer known as incertus autor. But the
identity of the overwhelming majority of compositions is well estab-
lished. Guillaume Dufay requested in his last will that his com-
position Ave regina coelorum38 be sung at the hour of his death.
To the liturgical text of the Marian antiphon he added the words:
Miserere tui labentis Dufay ne peccatorum ruat in ignem fervorum.
" Have mercy on thy dying Dufay lest he fall into the hellish fire of
sinners." In this work, dated as of 1464, medieval faith meets the
pronounced individualism of the Renaissance. Since the days of
Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) composers have been known to enter
their own names into the texts which they set to music. Composi-
tions on the death of great composers date from the same period and
in Josquin's immortal De'ploration de Johannes Okeghem39 there
appear at the end the names of the noblest disciples of Okeghem in-
cluding that of the composer himself.
36 In his famous Dodecachordon
(Basel, 1547; Lib. II, c. 39) he recalls: Multi
anni lapsi sunt cum Iuvenis in Horatij Odas nescio quas finxeram Harmonias ....
37 Cf. O.
Strunk, "Virgil in Music," The Musical Quarterly (1930).
38 Publ. by H. Besseler in Capella, Meisterwerke mittelalterlicher Musik (Kas-
sel, 1950), no. 4.

39 Publ. by A. Smijers, Werken van
Josquin des Pres, vijfde aflevering pp. 56-
58.
Such was the power of music in the Renaissance that it evoked

a whole poetic literaturewritten expresslyto be set to music. Thus
40
originatedthe poesia per musica of the Italians and the madrigal
verse of the English,41the bulk of which survives exclusively in the
various sets of Italian and English madrigals.
In the field of secular music and particularly in the French
chanson we meet with texts not only light and frivolous but of an
untarnishedobscenity such as no other periodin the history of music
has witnessed. Undoubtedly,the obscene is not an invention of the
Renaissance. But we do witness an extraordinaryphenomenon:the
composerswho wrote the solemn Masses, Magnificats, and Marian
antiphons were the same ones who dignifiedincrediblefrivolities to
the degree of clothing them in the most attractive four-, five-, and
six-part choral music. We have here another demonstrationof the
fact that the texts found in Renaissance music embracedlife in its
totality. Nothing was excluded from it. If the obscene anecdote
had a place in familiar conversation,so it had a place in music. To
be sure, many of these obscene chansons were later republishedin
religious versions. For example, the French Huguenot Pasquier
edited in 1575 and 1576 Lasso's compositionswith French texts, the
Mellange d'Orlando de Lassus . . .avec la lettre changee et reformee,
a second edition of which appearedin 1582.42 The religiousversions
of secular chansonsare an illustration of the troubled conscienceof
an era that was bubbling over with vitality and beset by gnawing
doubts.
Some of the greatest musiciansof the time, composerswho were
famous for their church music at that, did not shy away from ap-
proachingthe sphere of blasphemy. What is one to think of a poem
set to music by Orlandodi Lasso which runs like this:
II etait une religieuse
De l'ordrede l'Ave'Maria
Qui d'un Pater etait tant amoureuse
Que son gent corps avec le sien lia.
L'abesse vint demanderqu'il ya,
Lors respondirentl'un et I'autre:
Le Pater et l'Ave Maria
Sont enfiles en une Paternotre.
40 Cf. Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, II, 167ff.
41 Cf. H. E. Fellows, The English Madrigal Composers, 2nd ed. (London, 1948),
143; idem, English Madrigal Verse, 1588-1632 (Oxford, 1920).

42 Cf. A.
Sandberger, " Orlando di Lassos Beziehungen zu Frankreich und zur
franz6sischen Literatur," in Ausgewdhlte Aufsdtze zur Musikgeschichte (Munich,
1921), 112ff.
To be sure, satires on nuns and monks were as old as the in-

stitution of the monastery itself. Stories concerned with a nun or a
monk found in flagrante delicto were plentiful at all times. But
here the most sacred Christian symbols are involved, the daily
prayers of the Ave Maria and the Pater noster. Their frivolous use
was not designed to further the devotion of those engaged in prayer.
While similar frivolities are not unknown in medieval literature, their
appearance in music is a new phenomenon. It must be admitted that
to set to music such flippant verses means to formalize them in a
most peculiar manner. Yet, the same Orlando di Lasso wrote litur-
gical compositions on the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. It is not
easy to interpret this phenomenon satisfactorily. The least one can
say is this: Lasso's attitude is indicative of an advanced degree of
detachment; detachment is the basis for criticism; criticism enters
when traditional concepts are tested against new experience; if they
fail in that test a crisis ensues that may lead either to a reformu-
lation of the old or to new concepts altogether. That both these
processes took place in the Renaissance could be concluded from a
mere study of the texts of Renaissance music, even had all other
documents perished.43 This attitude on the part of the Renaissance
composer gave rise to much controversy throughout the sixteenth
century. I will quote only the opinion of Thomas Morley, not a
prudish man by any standards, who in his Introduction (p. 294) had
this to say on the madrigals: " This kind of music were not so much
disallowable if the poets who compose the ditties would abstain from
some obscenities which all honest ears abhor, and sometime from
blasphemies such as this ch'altro di te iddio non voglio 4 (I wish no
other God but thee) which no man (at least who has any hope of
salvation) can sing without trembling." Morley, himself the fore-
most composer of madrigals in the English tongue, puts the blame on
43Cf. Edward E. Lowinsky, Secret ChromaticArt in the Netherlands Motet
(New York, 1946); see the chapter on "The Religious Background," 111-134.
Lasso's attitude betrays also a certain ambivalence which is highly characteristic
of the late Renaissance; see the chapter on " The Meaning of Double Meaning in
the 16th Century " in the same book.
44 I do not know the source of this verse. Of
course, texts in which a lady is
addressed as goddess are plentiful in the Cinquecento. Bartolomeo Tromboncino,
famed frottolist of Mantua, sets to music a poem beginning with the words
Signora anci dea mea (Ms. Biblioteca Naz. Centr., Florence, Panciat. 27, fo. lllv-
112r). Cipriano de Rore of Ferrara writes a motet on a lady with the name
Argilla: Dispereamnisi sit dea vera deumquepropago (II terzo libro de motetti a
5 voci di Cipriano de Rore. .. .[Venice, 1549], xxiii. Cf. Antwerpener Motetten-
buch, 57 and 85.)
the poets. Maybe he wanted to keep in good standing with his col-
leagues. Otherwisehe might have suggested that the composerre-
frain from using such poems. Actually, both the poet and the com-
poser merely held up a mirror to the society which asked their
services.
In the light of all this it will cause little wonder if we find the
immense enthusiasm for music at all levels of Renaissance society
matched by an intense fear and violent condemnationof the seduc-
tive power of the ethereal art. HieronymusBosch placed musicians,
musical instruments,and choirbooksin the inferno in several of his
hell paintings. In one of them musiciansare placed in the immediate
company of gamblers. Savonarola, preaching in music loving
Florence,fulminated against the " suoni e canti," and on the pyre of
"Vanities" lit by his followers during the carnival season 1497 and
1498 there were lutes and music books on top of paintings, statues
and other objects of secularart.
III
We come to the last and to the most fundamentalquestion: does
the change in mentality which is evident from the choice of texts
find expressionin the music itself? Are the changes in Renaissance
music as comparedto medieval music merely matters of a " technical
evolution " or do they involve a basic change in the outlook of the
composer? It can be demonstrated,I believe, that not only were
new forms, new styles, new techniques, and new instruments de-
veloped during the Renaissance, but that the very nature of the
processof compositionitself changed. Two aspects may be regarded
as basic to the processof compositionin the Middle Ages: the first
involves the use of preexistentmelodies, preexistingformal schemes,
and preexisting rhythmic schemes. Preexisting melodies refer to
what was known as cantus firmus. A cantus firmus is a melody bor-
rowed either from the Gregorianchant or from other, e.g., secular
sources and used as a basis for constructing a piece of polyphonic
music according to the laws of counterpoint. Preexisting formal
schemes refer to the so-called formes fixes, poetical and musical
designs like the rondeau, the virelai, the ballade, the carol, the
ballata: a small number of well-definedforms rooted in the aristo-
cratic art of the troubadoursand trouveresand transferredfrom this
monodic genre to polyphonic composition. Preexisting rhythms re-
fer to the so-called rhythmic modes which were taken over from
ancient poetic meters: iambus, trochee, dactyl and so on. Medieval
notation of music before 1300 had no symbols for rhythm, the in-
vention of which must be credited to the ars nova. The medieval

composer had to rely instead on such schemes as the rhythmic modes.
Medieval music was not only based on preexisting melodies, it was
formally and rhythmically fitted to ready made patterns.
The second basic aspect of medieval composition is connected
with the prevailing technique of cantus firmus composition. The dif-
ferent voices in medieval polyphony are composed successively, one
after the other. The resulting conglomerate sound was not the
prime aim, but the by-product of the addition of one layer of melody
to another. The harmonic effect was not entirely arbitrary, since
the addition of voices was regulated by certain general conventions
which governed the selection of consonances and dissonances.
The Renaissance composer did not abandon at once the deeply
rooted foundations of preexisting forms, rhythms, melodies and suc-
cessive composition. Gradually, he advanced new ideas and tried
out entirely new conceptions and techniques, which slowly won the
upper hand in the struggle between tradition and innovation. This
is not the place to describe in detail the struggle between old and
new or to trace the gradual emergence of the new. I limit myself to
an elucidation of the new principles. The first principle stems from
the desire of the Renaissance musician to arrive at a musical ex-
pression free from all shackles. This involves abandoning the use of
preexisting melodies, rhythms, and forms. The second principle
derives from the urge of the Renaissance artist to conceive of his
work as a well planned and carefully organized whole rather than a
structure of several successively erected layers. This involves the
abandonment of the successive technique of composition and its re-
placement by the technique of simultaneous conception. Clearly,
the simultaneous composition of polyphonic music is possible only
where the composer has learned to think in harmonies. It is well
known that a good musician can sit down at the piano and impro-
vise in four voices at once. That means he can think in harmonies.
It is less well known that the capacity to think in harmonies had to
be acquired and developed at a certain period in history, and that
period was the Renaissance. It is in Italy around 1480 that we find
whole compositions written in four part harmony with the melody
in the highest and the root of the harmony in the lowest part. Har-
mony was projected and conceived from one point, the "root" or
the bass part, and the terms "homophony " 45 or " chordal style "
45On the justification of applying the term "homophony" to Renaissance
music, see my study on "English Organ Music of the Renaissance,"Part II, The
MusicalQuarterly(Oct., 1953), note 73.
and "familiar style" should be strictly limited to this harmonic

technique. Indispensable for the new harmonic technique was the
recognition of thirds and sixths as consonances by the Spanish
theorist Bartholomeo Ramis in 1482, who had studied in Salamanca,
but lived and taught for the greater part of his life in Bologna and
Rome. According to Pythagorean theory, which reigned supreme
throughout the Middle Ages, thirds and sixths had been considered
dissonances, for mathematical reasons only.
The roots of this harmonic style can be found in two phenomena,
the fauxbourdon and the rise of tonal harmony. Both were
brilliantly analyzed and convincingly traced back to the leadership
of Guillaume Dufay and the time around 1430 by Heinrich Besseler
in his work on Bourdon und Fauxbourdon.46 The term fauxbourdon
designates the accompaniment of a discant melody by fourth and
sixth parallels resulting in a composition moving throughout in six-
three chords 47 but starting from and ending in an octave-five chord.
We may see in this technique, which has its antecedents in English
usage and in the English predilection for thirds and sixths, a mani-
festation of the spreading enthusiasm for these consonances and of
the overwhelming desire for a full sensuous sound. Tonal harmony
as found in a series of three part chansons by Dufay and some of his
contemporaries shows the beginnings of the feeling for tonic-domi-
nant relationships. Already in compositions of Ciconia, who had
wandered from Liege to Padua, the bass began to assume the func-
tion of carrying the root of harmony.
Undoubtedly, one may regard the fauxbourdon as a primitive but
highly significant sound technique: while its entirely mechanical
character cannot be denied, it embodied nevertheless the first ex-
perience of simultaneous chordal thinking in three parts. To what
degree simultaneous conception operated in Dufay's, three-part com-
positions awaits investigation. If I may venture a considered guess,
it is that careful analysis will tend to show the beginnings of simul-
taneous planning, especially in two part writing, whereas actual
simultaneous conception of more than two parts will probably be
shown to be limited to certain isolated passages of harmonic em-
phasis.
An entirely different process of simultaneous composition is fol-
lowed in the fugal polyphony of the Renaissance, the systematic
beginnings of which fall around the same time as harmonic simul-
taneous planning: c. 1480. Josquin des Prez (1450-1521) is the first
46 Leipzig, 1950. Cf. also Ch. van den Borren, Guillaume Dufay, 1926.
47 Fourth and sixth parallels seen from the
highest voice are six-three chords seen
from the lowest.
composer to use this technique not as an occasional device-as such

it can be traced back to the early thirteenth century-but as the
structural basis for a whole series of extended compositions. Here a
number of musical subjects are taken up by one voice after another
resulting in a free, unified, and yet complex contrapuntal organism:
free because it is not tied to a cantus firmus, unified because the same
thematic substance penetrates all parts, complex because each part
presents the theme at a different time while the other voices go
against it contrapuntally, avoiding simultaneity in rhythm and meter.
This results in a tonal structure unified harmonically, diversified
rhythmically and metrically. Such a structure cannot be conceived
either successively or strictly simultaneously: here the composer pro-
jects each part in relation to each other part; even the theme itself is
invented with an eye toward how it is to be used and by how many
voices. An increase in the number of voices restricts the freedom of
movement of each of them, a decrease expands it.
Simultaneous conception of harmony and of polyphony emerges
as the most essential single factor in the epoch-making changes in
the process of composition in the Renaissance. It is the center
around which a great many phenomena are grouped and from which
they derive their meaning and their coherence with one another. It
has been shown that the beginnings of choral singing date back to the
time around 1430, medieval polyphony having been performed by
soloists.48 It is significant that these beginnings coincide with the
emergence of fauxbourdon. And while fauxbourdon may not have
originated in a choral conception it has been shown to have been
"taken over by the trend toward choir music." 49
Around 1480 the ideal of choral music has been entirely realized.
This is evident in the music of the mature Josquin.50 He knows how
to write a fully singable style not only for one or two 51 but for all
voices, and the increasing care with which he applies the text to
48 Cf. M. Bukofzer, "The
Beginnings of Choral Polyphony," Papers of the
American Musicological Society 1940 (publ. 1946), and in revised form: Studies in
Medieval and Renaissance Music (New York, 1950), 176-189. Cf. also H. Bes-
seler, Bourdon und Fauxbourdon (Leipzig, 1950), 180-183.
49 Cf. Bukofzer, loc. cit., 185. Besseler (loc. cit.,
184-5) established that Dufay
changed the originally instrumental tenor of his fauxbourdon style to a vocal part.
He sees in this "Sing-Fauxbourdon " one of several predecessors of Netherlands
choir music.
50 See Besseler (op. cit., 187) for literary testimony in support of vocal rendi-
tion of polyphonic music in the second half of the 15th century. 51 For the dis-
cant-tenor lied of the generation of Binchois with a filling part (contratenor)
added later, see Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam,
1931), 195-6.
each part shows clearly vocal intent. By that time fauxbourdon has
matured to falso bordone, the Italian four part version of a homo-
phonic, syllabic style of choral singing. It is when the several voices
of a composition join into one body of harmony that choral mass
effects become possible. This is the meaning of the steady increase
in number of singers symptomatically demonstrated in the growing
size of the Papal Choir in Rome and that of the cathedral in Antwerp,
a growth that coincides with the evolution of a harmonic concept.
From 1430 on we observe a constant increase in the number of
voices of composition. Fauxbourdon is set for three voices, falso
bordone for four,52 and this is also the norm for Josquin and his
generation; by the time of Gombert (1490-1556) composition for
five parts prevails. The use of a double choir in Italy before and
after Willaert presupposes two choirs of four parts joining at final or
otherwise emphasized points in an eight part climax.53 From here
the development goes on to compositions for three and four choirs
for 12 and 16 voices manipulated with consummate skill by such
Venetian composers as Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586) and his nephew
Giovanni (1557-1612). This line extends on the one hand to the
German Baroque and to Heinrich Schiitz, who studied with Gio-
vanni Gabrieli in Venice, on the other hand to the Roman Baroque,
to Vincenzo Ugolini and his pupil Orazio Benevoli (1602-72), who
is the uncontested master of the four choir combination.5
Ever since the first experiments with a consciously harmonic
style of singing were made musicians and listeners had become in-
creasingly fascinated by the sheer magic of harmony. The steady
addition of voices used to duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate
triadic harmony, the continuous expansion of the harmonic range
until it included the triads on all twelve tones-this was reached by
1555-the further experimentation with quarter-tone harmony
(Vicentino), the constant enlargement of the vocal and instru-
mental apparatus,55point to a state of growing intoxication with the
52
We establishhere merely the prevailingnorm. In each period a minority of
works can be found written for a number of voices greater than the "normal"
amount. For a splendid early example of a six-part falso bordone,see Bukofzer
(loc. cit., 186).
53Cf. Giovanni d'Alessi, " Precursorsof Adriano Willaert in the Practice of
Coro Spezzato," Journal of the American Musicological Society (1952), 187.
54See Father LaurenceFeininger'srecent edition of 3 Masses for 16 voices, one
psalm for 16 and another for 24 parts in the Monumenta Liturgiae Polychoralis...
(Rome, 1950-51).
55Orlandodi Lasso'sKapelle in Munich comprisedat its highest point 73 per-
sons. This numberincludessingers,instrumentalists(" Posauner" and "geiger "),
organists,and choirboys.
power of sound, the multicolored brilliance of modulatory harmony,

the emotional effects of major and minor, consonance and dissonance,
high and low registers, the play of contrasts between several choirs,
between vocal and instrumental choirs, and the play with echo effects.
The same attitude toward sound is reflected in the introduction
of solo stops into the Renaissance organ. " It was these new organ
stops that gave the organ the quality which today seems to be its
distinctive feature: the contrast and mixture of different timbres
. . . [this] was a new discovery of the sixteenth century." 56
The Renaissance composer's relationship to the phenomenon of
dissonance was determined by his desire to base polyphony on triadic
harmony as its. main foundation. The relegation of dissonance to
unaccented beats as a passing note, and its toleration on the ac-
cented beat only when tied over from an unaccented beat follows
logically from this position.57 The use of dissonance was gradually
liberalized through the composers' increasing preoccupation with the
expression of passionate texts in music, while there was greater
liberty almost from the beginning in the keyboard music of the
Renaissance.58
Finally, as the new practice of choral singing resulted in the emer-
gence of the folio choir book,59 so simultaneous conception of music
produced a new mode of notation. The invention of the musical
score, a form of notating the different parts of a composition in ver-
tical order so as to make their simultaneous character and interplay
visible, has been attributed by the German theorist Lampadius to the
generation of Isaac and Josquin, which came to the fore around
1480.60
Harmonic simultaneity had its home in Italy, polyphonic simul-
taneity originated in the North. The new harmonic language of the
South was cultivated in the secular forms of the late fifteenth and the
sixteenth centuries, the frottola, villanesca, madrigal, balletto, and in
the spiritual, but non-liturgical lauda sung in the vernacular; the
new polyphonic language of the North was developed in the church
music of Okeghem, Josquin des Prez, Gombert, and their contem-
56 C.
Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940), 305. See
also E. E. Lowinsky, "English Organ Music of the Renaissance," Part II, The
Musical Quarterly (Oct., 1953), esp. 532-36, 542-45.
57 This is also Besseler's
point of view. Cf. Bourdon und Fauxbourdon, 224.
Cf. also K. Jeppesen, The Style of Palestrina, 2d Eng. ed., 1946.
58 Cf. my study on "English Organ Music," Part I, loc. cit. (1953), 383-5.
59 Cf. Bukofzer, loc. cit., and Besseler, Bourdon (156-7).
60 E. E. Lowinsky, " On the Use of Scores by Sixteenth Century Musicians," in
Journal of the American Musicological Society I (1948).
poraries. The sixteenth century saw a process of interpenetration

between the harmonious euphony of the South and the contrapuntal
dynamism of the North which found its culmination in the Italian
madrigal and the Netherlands motet. The Italian madrigal ab-
sorbed Northern polyphony, whereas the Netherlands motet opened
itself more and more to the expressive energies of the Italian madri-
gal and its novel harmonic and tone painting devices. The whole
century can be viewed in terms of this struggle of artistic principles,
a struggle in which leadership slowly changed from the North to the
South.
The first great synthesis took place in the work of Josquin des
Prez, recognized by his own, and remembered by many succeeding
generations, as the outstanding musical genius of his age, in whose
work can be found the seeds of the bountiful and diversified harvest
of the new ideas, forms and techniques of Cinquecento music. A
dual embodiment of this open meeting of North and South and its
climax may be seen in the twin stars of Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594)
and Pierluigi da Palestrina (1526-1594). Lasso, the Netherlander,
received his musical education for the most part in Italy; his be-
ginnings as a composer were under the predominating influence of
the Italians. Palestrina, the Italian, grew up in the shadow of the
Papal Choir in Rome, which, although international in its selection
of singers, was dominated artistically by the Netherlanders; he
started out stylistically almost as a Netherlands composer. Both
artists were moving in opposite directions toward the same goal of
synthesis. They reached it in very different ways.
Perhaps the strangest fruit of the encounter between Flanders
and Italy was the secret chromatic art in the Netherlands motet
described in this writer's book of the same title.61 An outgrowth of
musica ficta-the system of rules by which singers were taught when
to flatten or sharpen certain notes in certain melodic and harmonic
situations-the secret chromatic art extended this technique system-
atically to a whole chain of notes in the circle of fifths. The result
of such an extension of musica ficta was a bold and novel technique
of modulation which made for a reading not only of deeper ex-
pression, but also of greater musical logic and coherence in the sense
in which the sixteenth century preached and practiced musical co-
herence. The chromatic modulations, not written down but implied,
fall with great regularity on text passages of intense emotion. An
analysis of the texts and of the social background of the music and
musicians led to the thesis that we have here an expression of crypto-
61Op. cit. note 43 above.
Reformed artists living in those same Netherlands which, twenty

years later, were the scene of a violent religious war. The secret
chromatic art led me to investigate the basic ambiguity in the philo-
sophical, literary and artistic expression of the epoch in a chapter on
the meaning of double meaning in the sixteenth century.62
The antithesis between the magic of rich and variegated sound
and the severity of linear counterpoint was experienced in its fullness
for the first time by the musicians of the Renaissance. It has not
left the European scene since. The struggle between these two atti-
tudes characterized the evolution of Baroque polyphony, it found a
balance in the late polyphony of the three Viennese classical masters,
it broke out afresh in the contrast between the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. If the love for sensuous sound and the delight
in linear counterpoint may be regarded as the material and the
spiritual faces of music, then it may be said that Renaissance and
Baroque developed both the body and the spirit of music to its
fullest, that the Viennese masters-but especially Mozart-created
the most singular integration of the two in their late works, whereas
the nineteenth century emphasized the material and the twentieth
the intellectual side of music. It need not be stressed that this con-
stitutes a rough appraisal from one point of view only.
IV
It is difficult to imagine that the musician of the Renaissance
would break out from the safety of the formes fixes and the cantus
firmus technique into a freedom of musical expression in which all
guidance and direction was lacking. The question arises: what took
the place of cantus firmus and formal schemes? In answering it we
come to another fundamental innovation of Renaissance music. It
concerns the relation between music and text. How complete that
reversal was may be illustrated by two statements. The first presents
the attitude of the medieval motet composer. Magister Aegidius of
Murino, who speaks for the fourteenth century, after having duly
described the successive process of composition writes:
Postquam cantus est factus et ordi- After the composition is finished,

natus, tune accipe verba que debent take the words of the motet and
62 Cf. Secret Chromatic Art, 135-175. It is only fair to state that my book
was received with high praise and with vehement criticism at the time of its
publication. It is a source of satisfaction that such great experts in 15th and 16th
century music as Charles van den Borren and the late Alfred Einstein accepted
my findings without reservation. Since then I have collected much additional and
supporting material which I hope to submit in systematic form before long.
esse in moteto et divide ea in qua- divide them into four sections. Then
tuor partes; et sic divide cantum in divide the music into four sections
quatuor partes; et prima pars verbo- too, and set the first part of the
rum compone super primam partem text to the first part of the music
cantus, sic ut melius potest, et sic as best you can and thus proceed to
procede in finem; et aliquando est the end. And sometimes it is neces-
necesse extendere multas notas super sary to extend many notes over few
pauca verba . . . quousque perven- words . . . until they are all used up.
iant 63 ad complementum.64
In this wonderful formula music is the Procrustean bed into
which the text has to fit itself as best it can. Admittedly, this is an
extreme procedure even in medieval practice. Yet it is characteristic
of the prevailing lack of consonance between music and text. For
the loose connection between word and tone in the music of the
Middle Ages cannot be denied. Even Guillaume de Machaut, com-
poser and poet, did not concern himself with bringing about a cor-
respondence between the rhythmic groupings of his composition and
the groups of verses in his poem. It is not unusual for the music
of a medieval virelai or ballata to tear apart the different stanzas of a
poem. Even to separate the syllables of a single word is common
enough. To be sure, in the polyphonic conductus of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries we meet at times with syllabic declamation
of the same text simultaneously enunciated in all voices. But never
do we find consistent application of short notes to short syllables and
vice versa. Besides, secular music in the Middle Ages uses identical
music for changing text, it did not aspire to express it, except in a
very general way.
Here the Renaissance caused a veritable revolution. The new
relationship between word and tone was stated by no one more
clearly than by Zarlino, the illustrious theorist of Venice, devoted
disciple of Willaert. In his Istituzioni harmoniche of 1558 (book IV,
ch. 32) he refers significantly to Plato's definition of music which
distinguishes between text, harmony, and rhythm, and he writes:
... pari che in tal compositione 'una ... it may seem as if in such a com-
di queste cose non sia prima dell'al- position all elements were of equal
tra; tuttavia avanti le altre parti weight; however, he (Plato) puts
pone La Oratione, come cosa prin- the text as the principal element
cipale; et le altre due parti, come ahead of the others; and the two re-
63 Orig.: pervenientur. 64Coussemaker, Scriptores de musica, III, 125. Cf.
Heinrich Besseler, Studien zur Musik des Mittelalters, Archiv fur Musikwissen-
schaft VIII (1926), 200; see also Marius Schneider, Die Ars Nova des XIV.
Jahrhunderts in Frankreich und Italien (Wolfenbiittel, 1930), 40.
quelle, che serveno a lei: Percioche maining parts are subservient to it:
dopo che ha manifestato il tutto col for after he has revealed the whole
mezo delle parti dice, che l'Harmonia, by means of the parts he says that
& il Numero debbeno seguitare la harmony and rhythm must follow
Oratione, & non la Oratione il Nu- the text and not vice versa. And
mero, ne l'Harmonia. Et cio e il this is as it should be.
dovere.
Then referring to Horace's warning in his Ars poetica: Versibus
exponi Tragicis res Comica non vult, Zarlino continues:
... si come non e lecito tra i Poeti As poets are not supposed to com-
comporre una Comedia con versi pose a comedy in tragic verse so
Tragici; cost non sara lecito al Musico musicians are not supposed to com-
di accompagnare queste due cose, cioe bine harmony and text in an unsuit-
l'Harmonia, et le Parole insieme, fu- able manner. Therefore it would
ori di proposito. Non sara adunque not be fitting to use a sad harmony
conveniente, che in una materia alle- and a slow rhythm with a gay text or
gra usiamo l'Harmonia mesta, & i a gay harmony and quick and light-
Numeri gravi; ne dove si tratta ma- footed rhythms to a tragic matter
terie funebri, et piene di lagrime, e full of tears.
lecito usare un'Harmonia allegra,
& Numeri leggieri, o veloci ...
Zarlino becomes more specific and advises the composer
... di accompagnare in tal maniera to set each word to music in such a
ogni parola, che dove ella dinoti as- way that where it denotes harshness,
prezza, durezza, crudelta, amaritu- hardness, cruelty, bitterness and
dine, & altre cose simili, l'harmonia other similar things the music be
sia simile a lei, cioe alquanto dura, similar to it, that is somewhat hard
& aspra; di maniera pero, che non and harsh, however, without offend-
offendi. Simigliantemente quando ing. Similarly, when one of the
alcuna delle parole dimonstrara words expresses weeping, pain, heart-
pianto, dolore, cordoglio, sospiri, break, sighs, tears and other similar
lagrime, & altre cose simili; che things, let the harmony be full of
l'harmonia sia piena di mestitia. sadness.
And now Zarlino actually defines sad harmony as one which com-
bines slow movement with the use of syncopated dissonances and
minor chords, whereas gay harmony prefers major chords in light
and fast rhythms. We have here nothing less than the foundation
of a theory of tonal expression that determined in principle the
music from the sixteenth century onward, though musical means,
forms, and techniques changed vastly.
In his theory of the relation between word and tone Zarlino
stresses in particular the new theory of text declamation:
... ma etiandio dovemo osservare, di but we must also observe to set the
accommodare in tal maniera le parole words of the text in such manner to
della Oratione alle figure cantabili, the notes, and in such rhythms, that
con tali Numeri, che non si oda al- no barbarism be heard, such as
cun Barbarismo; si come quando si happens when a long syllable is
fa proferire nel canto una sillaba set to a short note or a short
longa che si doverebbe far proferir syllable to a long note, as one hears
breve: per il contrario una breve, nowadays in infinite compositions,
che si doverebbe far proferir longa; a truly shameful thing.
come in infinite cantilene si ode ogni
giorno; il che veramente e cosa ver-
gognosa.
And finally Zarlino proceeds to criticize what no medieval musician
would ever have dared to criticize: the sacred tradition of the
Gregorian Chant, on the ground of its faulty and barbaric declama-
tion of the text where we hear instead of Dominus, Angelus, Filius:
Dominus, Angelus, Filius. Zarlino goes further and demands an
actual revision of the chant based on the humanistic principles of
text declamation. In recommending such a revision he writes:
... il che sarebbe cosa molto lodevole, ... it would be a very praiseworthy
et tanto facile da corregere, che mut- thing and the correction would be
andoli poco poco, si accommodarebbe so easy to make that one could ac-
la cantilena; ne per questo mutarebbe commodate the chant by gradual
la sua prima forma: essendo che con- changes; and through this it would
siste solamente nella Legatura di not lose its original form, since it
molte figure, o note, che si pongono is only through the binding to-
sotto le dette sillabe brevi, che senza gether of many notes put under
alcun proposito le fanno lunghe; short syllables that they become
quando sarebbe sofficiente una sola long without any good purpose when
figura. it would be sufficient to give one
note only.
Zarlino lived to see this suggestion for reform incorporated in the
brief of Gregory XIII of 1577 through which Palestrina and Zoilo,
both members of the Papal Choir, were charged with revising the
Gregorian Chant.65 Nothing illustrates better the change in aesthe-
tic feeling than the imposition of Renaissance principles on the Plain
65Strangely enough, the great historian of this reform of the Chant, though
quoting Zarlinoat length, writes: "Doch warum aussert weder er [Zarlino] noch
Vanneo noch Lago, die in dieser Hinsicht mit ihm iibereinstimmen,einen Tadel
gegen den Choral, dessen Melodien ihnen doch bekannt waren?" Molitor quotes
from chapter 33 of Book 4, Zarlino'scriticism of the chant occurs in chapter 32
of the same book. P. Raphael Molitor, Die Nach-TridentinischeChoral-Reform
zu Rom (Leipzig, 1901), I, 133.
Chant which was held by medieval writers to have been dictated to

Pope Gregory I by the Holy Ghost. In old miniatures the Pope can
be seen writing in the presence of the white dove which presumably
inspires the melodies he puts on paper.
We have quoted Zarlino at length, and not without reason. For
we are here at the very core of the new musical concept of the
Renaissance. In giving up the security and guiding power accorded
by the cantus firmus technique and the preexisting patterns, the
Renaissance composer adopts the human word as his new guide. The
text becomes now the principal source of musical inspiration. The
composer regards it as his most noble task to express in tones the
meaning of the text and its pictorial and emotional content. The
madrigalist of the sixteenth century broke with the old custom of
setting different verses to the same music; he accompanies each
stanza with the music appropriate to it. The modern relationship
between music and text as we know it in all dramatic music has its
origin in the new attitude of the Renaissance composer. The con-
sequences that flow forth from this new principle are innumerable:
musical rhythm is now shaped by the rhythm of the word; clear
declamation of the text becomes a universal demand; to the degree
that the composer is absorbed in the desire to translate the text into
music he loses interest in contrapuntal abstractions and becomes pre-
occupied with questions of harmonic color, dissonance, rhythm. In
his quest for expression the musician of the Renaissance created en-
tirely new tonal phenomena: 66 he expanded the medieval tonal space
of not quite three octaves to almost five octaves; he discovered and
exploited for the first time the bass region; consistent with the ex-
pansion of the tonal space string and wind instruments were made,
instead of in families of three, in families, of 4, 5, 6, 7, and even 8
different ranges; the bass range of keyboard instruments was ex-
tended and chromatic trumpets 67 and the trombone 68 were created
to facilitate instrumental performance of the newly added bass
region. In imitation of the ancient Greek chromatic genus the
Renaissance musician introduced and utilized systematically the half
tone steps of the chromatic scale; he discovered new harmonic con-
tinents. It is of symbolic significance that in the same year 1519
o6 See for the following: E. E. Lowinsky, "The
Concept of Physical and Musi-
cal Space in the Renaissance," Papers of the American Musicological Society (An-
nual meeting, 1941), 57-84.
67 Cf. Curt Sachs, "Chromatic Trumpets in the
Renaissance," The Musical
Quarterly (1950), 62-66. 68 Cf. H. Besseler's admirable study "Die Entstehung
der Posaune," Acta Musicologica (1950), 8-35.
in which Magellan started his circumnavigationof the globe, Adri-

anus Willaert, later choir-masterof San Marco in Venice, for the
first time in the history of music navigated, as it were, around the
whole tonal space by going step by step through the circle of fifths
until he reached after 12 steps the point of departure. To exploit
these new harmonicroutes the Pythagoreantuning system preserved
throughout the Middle Ages had to be given up and it was in the
Renaissancethat the first attempts at a well-temperedtuning system
were made. The conquestof these novel means of chromaticismand
modulation provided the musician with a wealth of new expressive
shadings in harmonic color and melodic inflection that were to be
exploited throughout the sixteenth century, especially in the rich
literature of the Italian madrigal which, strangely enough, glorified
not modern poetry in the first place but Petrarch, the trecentist,
"the first modernpoet, able to give expressionto the most intimate,
the most delicate, and the most sublime impulses of his soul, the
first to put in perfect form the discordanceof his own feelings."69
While the Italians excelled in the development of a refined har-
monic and chromaticstyle surchargedwith emotion, created to re-
flect the tensions, desires,and frustrationsof the human soul, it was
a Frenchman,Clement Janequin,who held up, as it were, an acousti-
cal mirror to the world to catch and to render musical what was
audible in it. Thus he composed the bird concerts, Le chant des
oiseaux, Le rossignol, L'alouette; he created the vast battle scenes of
La bataille de Marignan, La prinse et reduction de Boulogne, hunt-
scenes in La chasse au cerf, street scenes of Paris with the character-
istic calls of the vendors in Les cries de Paris, and the delightful
gossip of women in Le caquet des femmes. Each one of these pro-
gram chansons gave rise to a whole literature of works in the same
vein.
Unbelievablethough it may seem, Janequin took his battle music
with its drum rolls, trumpet calls, and its artillery cannonadesand
used it as a model for a Mass.70 This was in accordancewith another
innovation of musical technique in the Renaissance: the cantus
firmusas a basis for a Mass was replacedby a complete composition
with all voices, sacredor secular. By stretching,repeating,and vary-
ing it the composerextendedit to the length necessaryfor the text of
69 Cf. A.
Einstein, The Italian Madrigal,I, 190.
70La Bataille de Marignanis availablein Henri Expert's Maitres Musiciensde
la Renaissance Francaise (Paris, 1894-1908), vol. 7, and in Hans Engel's Das
mehrstimmigeLied des 16. Jahrhunderts in the recent series Das Musikwerk
(Cologne,no date); the Mass La Bataille has been edited by Henry Expert in the
AnthologieChorale (Paris, 1947).
the Mass. Obviously, the Renaissance composer must have felt

bored by the task of setting the invariable text of the Ordinary of the
Mass to music. And so he helped himself by using music set to more
interesting texts. This procedure known as parody technique seems
to indicate that the religious experience embodied in the Mass was
no longer strong enough to compensate for the lack of drama and
variety in its text. Thus it is that the chief attention of the com-
poser shifts from the Mass in the fifteenth to the motet in the six-
teenth century. The texts of the motets change according to the
time of the day and the season, and in their selection the composer
had a vast choice between the books of the Old Testament, those of
the New Testament, and later texts in Latin prose or poetry, both
spiritual and secular. As was mentioned before, the composer gradu-
ally gave up the cantus firmus technique in motet composition too,
and instead strove for a polyphonic organism in which all parts were
singable, alike in rhythm, thematic material, and in their adaptability
to the text. The rise of the fugal technique of composition gave
great momentum to the development of instrumental music.
One can view the evolution of vocal music in the Renaissance as
one great process of emancipation: emancipation from the Gregorian
chant, from the cantus firmus, from the technique of successive com-
position, from preexistent patterns of form and rhythm. Similarly,
one can interpret the evolution of instrumental music in the
Renaissance as a slow process of emancipation from the domination
of vocal music.71 Throughout the Renaissance, instruments were
called upon to reinforce the parts sung by the choir; they substituted
for missing voices; they accompanied the solo voice; they alternated
with the choir in the performance of the Mass, the Te Deum, the
Magnificat, and the hymn. Dance music, though enjoying a certain
measure of independence, borrowed not infrequently from secular art
melodies or from folk-song. But vocal pieces constituted the chief
repertory of purely instrumental ensembles and of the keyboard
player or the lute virtuoso. Just as the beginnings of independent
thought on the part of the medieval theologian and philosopher are
to be found in the commentaries on the accepted authorities of the
Bible, the Sentences and Aristotle, so we find the beginnings of an
independent instrumental style in the "commentaries" on vocal
models, the contrapuntal elaborations, the ornamentations and the
variations on liturgical and secular tunes. In fact, the Spanish
called these variations glosas, i.e., commentaries. True, the organist
71Cf. Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York, 1940),
297-8.
was entirely free in those small improvisatory pieces called prelude,

preambulum, prooemium, toccata, intonazione, used originally, as the
last name suggests, to sound the pitch for the choir in a manner both
effective and artful. But it was only when the new fugal style of the
motet emerged that a technique was found that enabled the composer
of instrumental music to evolve what we call "absolute music," an
autonomous musical structure performed by instruments independent
of voice, word, and other external relationships. These new forms
received various names: canzona, ricercar, fantasia, and they all con-
tributed to the evolution of one of the most condensed, unified, logi-
cal and dynamic structures that music knows: the fugue. At the end
of the sixteenth century when vocal music abandons contrapuntal
construction, counterpoint has found a new home in instrumental
music. Ultimately, the rise of the motivic and fugal technique of
composition forms the origin of the idea of thematic work on which
all instrumental music has been based ever since.
Harmonic and polyphonic simultaneous conception as evolved by
the Renaissance musician have brought about a complete change in
the process of composition. Even where, in later periods, use is
made of cantus firmus, its meaning and technique have changed
fundamentally. After the arrival of a harmonic conception the
medieval procedure of successive composition of voices was gone.
When Bach in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion in-
troduced the cantus firmus of the chorale sung by the bright voices
of the boys above the dramatic dialogue of two choruses, accom-
panied by two orchestras and continuo, he did not return to the suc-
cessive manner of composition; the cantus firmus was no longer the
point of departure for the successive alignment of parts, it had a
merely modifying influence on the conception of a gigantic whole
governed by overall dramatic, symbolic, harmonic, and contrapuntal
considerations.
The two principal ideas from which music has since the sixteenth
century drawn its inspiration, music as expression, as painting in
tones, and music as structure based on thematic work, both origi-
nated in the Renaissance. In a work like Bach's St. Matthew Passion
the two streams flow together into one mighty river. Aside from
such rare moments of synthesis, different nations took different roads
in a surprisingly logical manner. Italy, which pioneered the idea of
music as expression, created the most passionate form of music, the
music drama. France, which specialized early in tone painting,
created an almost pictorial style of instrumental music that extends
from the French lutenists and the clavecin music of Couperin and
Rameau to the suggestive atmospheric tone poems of Debussy. The
Germanic North, which is responsible for the emergence of fugal

polyphony, created the greatest autonomous structures of music and
led in the composition of the fugue, sonata, quartet, and symphony.
V
From the vantage-point of the criteria elaborated we can now
look back at the Ars Nova of the fourteenth century to examine
briefly its position. The theorists of the Ars Nova emphasize more
than anything else the revolution in the conception and notation of
rhythm. Heretofore the composer could draw only on the simple
patterns of five rhythmic modes, all in ternary meter. Now not only
was duple meter admitted, but a notation of rhythm was introduced
based on the principle of the repeated mathematical multiplication
of 2 or of 3 by itself. This simple yet ingenious mathematical men-
suration of rhythm, the basis of the notation of rhythm ever since,
was described for the first time by a mathematician, Johannes de
Muris, of the University of Paris, in his treatise Ars novae musicae
of 1319. We must remember that music was part of the quadrivium
and that a number of prominent theorists of music of the Middle
Ages were mathematicians. It is interesting to observe that the
theory of the continued multiplication of integers and fractional
numbers by themselves found its first systematic expression in the
treatise Algorismus proportionum of the greatest French mathe-
matician of the fourteenth century, Nicholas of Oresme (c. 1323-
1382), whom Moritz Cantor 72 calls in fact "Erfinder der Potenz-
grossen mit gebrochenen Exponenten," the inventor of power de-
velopment with fractional exponents. The fact that Johannes de
Muris evolved his notational method before Nicholas of Oresme
presented a consistently elaborated theory and mathematical notation
of power development suggests that this topic had occupied French
mathematicians for some time. Nicholas of Oresme was probably
the man who summarized and brought to a conclusion the mathe-
matical thought of a whole generation. Thus it was the mathema-
ticians who opened the way and created the notational means for
the whole vast development of rhythmic and poly-rythmic figu-
rations in Western music.
72 Geschichte der Mathematik, 4 vols. (1890-1908), II, 121. This is confirmed
by Johannes Tropfke, Geschichte der Elementar-Mathematik, 6 vols. (Berlin &
Leipzig, 1921), II, 125. The latter gives also a detailed account of the beginnings
of power development in Greek, Indian, and Arabian sources (ibid., 104-108). It
is interesting that power development in Greek mathematics was so tied to geome-
try and the constructions of a square and a cube that it did not exceed the third
power, whereas the mensural notation of the Ars Nova required working with the
fourth power.
The invention of a rhythmical notation strictly proportionally

mensurableallowed suddenly a whole array of smaller note values
and an entirely unprecedented variety and contrast of rhythmic
figures. As if bewilderedand frightened by the onrush of so many
novel rhythmic possibilities,the musician of the Ars Nova immedia-
tely imposed severe restrictions on them. He subjected the whole
structure of a composition, especially the larger ones, to a strict
scheme of periodizationknown under the modernname of isorhythm
and under the old Latin term of talea. An entirely arbitrary
sequence of rhythms would return again and again throughout the
composition. Although an unsuspectedrichnessof rhythmicmotions
was made possible, the medieval idea of the rhythmic pattern was
only expanded, not abandoned. Not before the first third of the
fifteenth century was isorhythmic organization slowly replaced by
entirely free rhythmic invention.
The process of polyphonic composition was, in general, the suc-
cessive one. This is quite clear in the case of the Ars Nova motet.
First the cantus firmustaken from the GregorianChant was laid out
in the lowest voice in slow motion; next came the somewhat more
lively middle voice (motetus), and last the fast moving upper voice
(triplum). All voices were subjectedto the intellectual discipline of
isorhythmicprocedure. The differentiationand isolation of one voice
from the other clarifiedby the rhythmic gradation is completed by
the provision of a special text for each voice. In time the upper
voices receivedeven texts in the French vernacular,while the cantus
firmusremainedin Latin as if to lend a modicumof decorumto the
invasion of the liturgical sphere by strong secular forces. Thus
Guillaume de Machaut wrote a motet in which the cantus firmus
carriesthe Latin text Et gaudebit cor vestrum73 while the two upper
voices describethe joyous rewardsof faithful love in French verses.
In such a work the relation between cantus firmus and the other
voices is reversed. Originally,the cantus firmus with its liturgical
text and melody formed the spiritual center of the composition,the
other voices commentedon it. Now the other voices tell the actual
story, which is of secular origin, and the cantus firmus comments on
it with a well-chosenmotto of biblical or post-biblicalorigin.
The Ars Nova made certain beginnings in simultaneous con-
ception with the creation of new forms. The canon found its first
systematic exploitation in the fourteenth century. The Italian
Trecento canon (caccia) is limited to two voices, accompaniedby a
free instrumental lower voice, the French canon (chace) has three
73 Guillaumede Machaut, MusikalischeWerke,ed. by F. Ludwig, III, 25; also
availablein HistoricalAnthologyof Music, etc., no. 44.
parts, all of them canonic.74 Obviously, one cannot compose a canon

by successive projection of voices, but only by relating the canon
voice constantly to the first voice. In other words, the canon con-
stitutes strict imitation and thus the beginning of the polyphonic
technique of simultaneous conception. When simultaneous poly-
phonic composition was taken up by the Netherlanders we find
again the use of the canon as a principal means of construction. The
Netherlanders perfected the art of canonic writing. They developed
canons for two, three, and four voices. They cultivated the double
canon where two pairs of voices were canonically written. They
used mensuration canons in which two voices start simultaneously
and sing the same melody, but in rhythms of a different proportion.
Canonic writing was the cradle of simultaneous polyphonic con-
ception.
Another form much in use by the composers of the Ars Nova is
the hoquetus, in which each voice is led in short tone groups that are
constantly interrupted by pauses filled in by the other voices. Series
of syncopations in small note values are frequently results of this
technique. Evidently, in the hoquetus too there is a certain simul-
taneity at work in the projection of the single voices. It is a type of
simultaneous rhythmic planning.
That the beginnings of simultaneous planning extended even to
"harmony" may be deduced from the spectacular use of musica
falsa in the Ars Nova. The term, like the later term musica ficta,
refers to the introduction of chromatic notes into modal music. The
rules evolved by which singers were taught to apply chromatic alter-
ations not specified in the notation, were based chiefly on consider-
ations of consonance. This proves the growing awareness of and
sensitivity to the harmonic effect on the part of the Trecento com-
poser. Moreover, thirds and sixths, heretofore considered dis-
sonances for mathematical reasons, were now being used prominently
in the new sound texture. A realistic Englishman, Walter Odington
(c. 1300) went even so far as to justify the major and minor third as
consonances even though they cannot be so reckoned on mathemati-
cal grounds.75
The canon, as used in the French chace and the Italian caccia,
was originally based on poems depicting a hunt, which explains the
origin of the terms chace, caccia, and, in English, catch. Not only
74 Cf. Nino Pirrotta, " Per l'origine e la storia della ' caccia' e del ' madrigale'
trecentesco," Rivista Musicale Italiana 48 (1946), 305-323. Pirrotta quite reason-
ably concludes from the fact that the French chace has three voices the priority of
the simpler Italian caccia.
75Coussemaker,ScriptoresDe Musica Medii Aevi, I, 199.
was the canon technique a perfect symbol of the hunter chasing his
prey; the small note values introduced through the Ars Nova as well
as the hoquetus afforded splendid means to illustrate the excitement
of the hunt. A gradual transfer of symbolism changed the hunt to
the pursuit of lovers, to flight and pursuit in battle, and to all kinds
of worldly scenes involving motion and excitement. Composers of
the Trecento were also the first to conceive the idea of polyphonic
bird concerts76 in which not only the music but also the text was
designed to imitate bird calls by the invention of onomatopoetic
syllables. This practice of imitating nature's sounds with tones as
well as with specifically invented syllables reappeared on an en-
larged scale in Janequin's program chansons. It is a matter of specu-
lation to what degree the technical innovations of the Ars Nova
sprang from the desire to create musical means for a naturalistic
representation of reality. The process itself cannot be denied and
constitutes evidence that the Ars Nova created not only new musical
techniques but a new idea of symbolism and naturalism. This is
another Renaissance element in the Ars Nova which carried in it the
seeds of untold future possibilities.
It is clear from these brief comments that the Ars Nova takes a
position midway between medieval and Renaissance principles of
composition not unlike the place that Giotto holds in the art of
painting. He combines a new feeling for nature and for movement
with a new sense of space, without as yet achieving either the con-
ception of perspective or the closeness of the imitation of nature that
is the mark of the High Renaissance.
Historical movements rarely develop in a straightforward
direction; they are full of retrograde motions that point more to a
spiral form of evolution in which the upward curve is followed by
one downward. In the Ars Nova proper we have an upward curve
followed by a strong relaxation after the death of Machaut (1377),
a new upward curve (in the sense of the musical Renaissance defined
before) sets in with Dufay around 1430, again with Josquin des
Prez around 1480, then with the Italian madrigal and Willaert
around 1530, while the culminating point is reached around 1580
with the work of such composers as Lasso, Palestrina, Andrea
Gabrieli, Jachet Wert, and Marenzio.
76 Cf. H. Besseler, Musik des Mittelalters. . ., 141-142, ex. 94; a marvellous ex-
ample is Oswald von Wolkenstein's (1377-1445) Der May modelled after a piece of
the French composer J. Vaillant. It is available in Denkmdler der Tonkunst in
Osterreich IX, I and in the Historical Anthology of Music by A. T. Davison and
W. Apel (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), II, no. 60. See also Ch. van den Borren, La
Musique pittoresque dans le manuscrit 222C22 de Strasbourg (XVe Siecle), Bericht
iiber den Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress in Basel (1924), 88-105.
VI
Within the limits of the unavoidably sketchy outline presented
here it has not been possible to illuminate the manifold connections
between music and the general culture of the Renaissance except in
an occasional side-glance. We cannot here explore the highly in-
teresting connections between the emergence of harmonic thinking
and perspective in painting, between the new word-tone relationship
and the concept of decorum, concinnitas, or convenienza 77in the art
theory of the Renaissance, or the relations between the Renaissance
critique of Gregorian Chant and the humanist's criticism of the Latin
of the Church Fathers. There are other parallels: as the Renaissance
composer broke loose from the confining grip of medieval patterns,
so the Renaissance artist replaced the medieval patternbook by the
sketchbook destined to hold his free inventions and observations.78
The most important point, however, is that the new attitude of the
composer to the word, which is the hub of the stylistic revolution in
Renaissance music, springs from the humanistic movement.79 Unlike
the painter or sculptor, the musician of the Renaissance had no actual
models for his art from Greek or Roman antiquity. But he had the
verses of Horace and Vergil. He studied the ancient meters. He
knew that Greek music had been closely patterned after the meter
of the verse, that distinct recitation was all-important to the Greek
musician, who abstained from melodic embellishments and preferred
to set one note to each syllable of the text.
Thus the Renaissance musician made bold to resurrect and sur-
pass ancient music: resurrect it by setting Horatian odes to music
in faithful observation of the ancient meters, omitting vocal orna-
mentations, giving one tone to each syllable, surpassing it by setting
them in four parts, well aware-and proud-of the fact that harmony
and polyphony were "modern " innovations enriching music beyond
anything the ancients ever dreamed of.
77 Cf. Erwin Panofsky, "Idea." Ein Beitrag zur
Begriffsgeschichte der ilteren
Kunsttheorie (Leipzig, 1924), 23-38: Die Renaissance. See also Panofsky's chapter
on " Diirer as a Theorist of Art" in Albrecht Diirer (Princeton, 1945), esp. 276ff.
78See Ch. de Tolnay, History and Technique of Old Master Drawings (New
York, 1943), ch. II.
79 This is doubted by D. P. Walker, Der musikalische Humanismus im 16. und
friihen 17. Jahrhundert (1949), 55, and affirmed by my review of the study in the
Musical Quarterly (1951). I should like to take this opportunity to make a slight
correction. I wrote in my review: " Strangely, the essay contains no reference of"
(instead of " no discussion of, only a reference to ") "the concept of musica re-
servata, which so clearly forms part of musical humanism." Cf. also the chapter
on " Musica Reservata" in Secret Chromatic Art.
Compared to the towering contrapuntal constructions of the time

the Latin odes appear naive and simple today. Music historians
in general have tended to belittle their value and significance. But
we cannot fail to note the impression they made on contemporary
minds. Tritonius' odes published by his humanistic adviser Konrad
Celtes in 1507 were reissued in that same year and again in 1532 and
1551.80 A similar technique was used for the composition of hymns;81
the simple and syllabic settings of German chorales-some of which
can be found in one manuscript together with humanistic odes82-
were certainly not unaffected by this new style; the French composers
of the later chanson mesuree a l'antique applied precisely the same
principles to French verse in a musically more sophisticated manner.
Furthermore, the verses of the abandoned Dido from Vergil's Aeneid
were set to music throughout the century in a free and expressive
style which, however, preserved the essence of the humanistic re-
quirement: faithful and sensitive declamation of the text.
If we note furthermore that such ancient goddesses as Venus 83
and Fortuna appear in sixteenth century music and that important
stylistic innovations are introduced for "iconological" reasons,84we
must concede that a revision of our notions of the humanistic in-
fluence on music is in order.
In the "humanistic " compositions a conscious attempt was made
"to reintegrate classical form with classical content." 85 That in the
80 R. v. Liliencron, " Die Horazischen Metren in deutschen Kompositionen des
16. Jh.," Vierteljahrsschrift fur Musikwissenschaft (1887). H. J. Moser, Geschichte
der deutschen Musik (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1926), 379-398; the same: Paul Hofhaimer
(Stuttgart-Berlin, 1929), 162-167 and musical appendix 112-128; H. C. Wolff, " Die
geistlichen Oden des Georg Tranozius und die Odenkompositionen des Human-
ismus," in Die Musikforschung, VI, 4 (1953), 300-13. 81 Some hymns appeared in
Tritonius' collection. In 1533 Nicolaus Faber published the Melodiae Prudentianae
et in Virgilium now available in a reprint by J. Vecchi (Bologna, 1952).
82 E.
Bernoulli, Aus Liederbichern der Humanistenzeit (Leipzig, 1910); see
Beilage XVI a-c.
83 See above, text to note 30. There are many other ancient
gods and goddesses
besides Venus and Fortuna to be found in musical compositions of the Renaissance.
84E. E. Lowinsky, "The Goddess Fortuna in Music," The Musical Quarterly
(1943). In this study it was demonstrated how the idea of mutation, the governing
principle of Fortuna, was expressed by the Renaissance composer through musical
"mutation," the term used at the time to signify something akin to our modern
change of key or modulation.
85 This is the formula used
by Erwin Panofsky to distinguish the Italian Renais-
sance from the Carolingian revival on the one hand and the " proto-Renaissance"
and " proto-humanism " of the 12th and 13th centuries on the other; see his article
"Renaissance and Renascences," The Kenyon Review (1944), 201-236.
absence of Greek models this attempt was doomed to failure from

the start is obvious. What matters is the fact that it wrought a
profound and lasting change in the musical thought and practice of
the Renaissance by which all subsequent epochs were inescapably
affected. Greek writings on music were studied by Renaissance
musicians with the same awe and reverence as the philosophers
studied Plato, the sculptors ancient statues, and the architects the
remaining ancient buildings. Nicola Vicentino based his treatise of
1555, in which he introduced the use of chromatic and enharmonic
music with its half and even quarter tones, on the Greek use of the
chromatic and enharmonic genus, and he entitled his treatise ac-
cordingly L'antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica. Vincenzo
Galilei, the great musician and theorist, father of Galileo the physi-
cist, wrote a book entitled Dialogo della Musica antica e moderna.
It was published in 1581. Galilei, a member of the Florentine
camerata, and a much better student of Greek writers than Vicentino
ever aspired to be, drew the decisive conclusions. He postulated
complete abandonment of the polyphonic style in music, he scorned
counterpoint and demanded that the text be set to music for one
voice only, that the vocal part be entirely subservient to the rec-
itation and dramatic expression of the text and that harmonic sup-
port be left to an instrumental accompaniment.86 In this bold and
86 It has been said that " In spite of Galilei's discovery of the hymn of Meso-
medes, the first original of Greek music known at the time, the nature of Greek
music was a sealed book to the Camerata, since its notation could not be deci-
phered" (see M. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era [New York, 1947], 7). Yet
Galilei and his contemporaries knew so many writings on Greek music that the
above statement cannot be upheld in this radical form. The men of the Camerata
were quite aware of the monodic character of Greek music, of the intimate union
between poetry and music, of the primacy of the poetic text and the subordinate
role of music; they had a much clearer grasp of Greek modes, genders, and the
theory of musical ethos than did preceding generations. They knew that the an-
cients coordinated carefully certain rhythms, modes, and genders with certain emo-
tions. That all this had a decisive influence on the creation of dramatic monody
was shown sufficiently by D. P. Walker in his study on " The Musical Humanism,"
The Music Review (1941-1942); German translation (Kassel-Basel, 1949). But is
it correct to say that the notation of the hymns of Mesomedes " could not be deci-
phered"? This, indeed, is today the generally accepted view. It has apparently
not been noticed by modern writers that Galilei on p. 91 of his Dialogo della Musica
Antica e Moderna speaks of the famous tables of Alypios which contain the key to
the Greek letter notation, that he refers to Alypios's tract (si trova particularmente
in Roma nella libreria Vaticana; di che a mesi passati n'hebbi copia, con non poca
difficolta), that he prints on pp. 92-95 an extensive part of the tables of Alypios
with the letters for vocal and for instrumental notation and their modern equiva-
lents, that he then proceeds to print the three hymns of Mesomedes without claim-
ing to have discovered them himself (lequali furono trouate in Roma da un Gentil-
highly controversial treatise principles were enunciated that were to

govern the music of the future: cantata, opera, oratorio. Thus the
study of Greek ideas on music was used as a catalyst to bring about
those radical changes in the aims and means of music that introduced
a new epoch. The authority of ancient Greece was invoked to unseat
the universal rule of counterpoint that had been reigning uncontested
for half a millenium.
VII
We return, in conclusion, to our initial question: can the study
of music make a relevant contribution to the problem so hotly de-
bated among historians of culture whether or not there was a
" Renaissance " and if so, what precisely it means. In spite of the
considerable reluctance on the part of eminent musical scholars to
use the term "Renaissance " in music, I believe that a justification
for so doing may be established on the foundation of the following
ten theses:
1. In the fifteenth century a reorganization of musical institu-
tions was begun which created the material foundation for an un-
surpassed flowering of music. The initial impulse came from the
prosperous and music loving Netherlands and developed such force
that it reached into all corners of Western, and even parts of Eastern
Europe, before it was spent. The constant migration of Netherlands
musicians to Italy and the interaction between Italian harmony and
Northern counterpoint were essential factors in the direction of
huomo nostro Fiorentino. . .) and that he finally advises those who would like to
transcribe these hymns in modern notation of the omissions and errors that, through
the long passage of time and the fault of copyists, are to be found in the original
notation. Galilei puts all this into the mouth of Count Bardi. Now Strozzi answers
that he is overjoyed finally to have real Greek music in his hands, and that, indeed,
at the first opportunity he will transcribe the hymns into modern notation. All
that can be said therefore is that Galilei did not actually offer a transcription of the
Greek hymns. It is impossible to say that they " could not be deciphered." Be-
sides, a mere examination of the reprint of the ancient notation was sufficient to
demonstrate to the readers of Galilei that these hymns were not contrapuntal, but
monodic, that mostly there was only one note to a syllable of the text, that if a
melisma occurred, it consisted of two, rarely of three notes, and if so, usually at the
end of a line. Just those things that mattered to the humanistic musician were
perfectly evident from the original Greek notation even though the actual melody
was not presented in modern notes. The reason why Galilei did not transcribe the
hymns himself may be sought in the imperfect form in which he found the hymns
notated, but also perhaps in the indisputable fact that the Greek melodies are so far
removed from the ideal of Italian 16th century melody that he must have feared
to deter rather than to encourage his contemporaries to study and love Greek music.
Cf. Pontus de Tyard, Le Second Solitaire (1555), 25-27, (1st ed. 1552) for a Greek
notation very similar to Galilei's Segni del Lydio, 93.
musical development during the Renaissance, to which the English

made an early but decisive contribution through their insistence on
the consonant character of thirds and sixths in spite of mathematical
evidence adduced by Puritanic Pythagoreans.
2. The outstanding characteristic of the musical innovations of
the Renaissance was a movement of emancipation carried on along
the whole front of creative activity: emancipation from the formes
fixes, from the dominion of rhythmic modes, and later from the
shackle of isorhythmic construction, emancipation, above all, from
the cantus firmus and cantus prius factus principle, and emancipa-
tion, also, from the hold of Pythagorean tuning.
3. Emancipation is impossible without criticism. Zarlino's
criticism of the Gregorian chant and its ensuing reform were as
typical for the humanistic attitude as they would have been un-
thinkable on the part of medieval composers. But this criticism
was only a symptomatic manifestation of the rejection of the whole
code of medieval musical aesthetics and the procedures of com-
position. Even where medieval techniques remained in force side by
side with the new-as, e.g., with regard to cantus'firmus composition
-their nature was essentially changed.
4. The emancipation from the Gregorian chant went hand in
hand with the gradual emancipation from the old system of modes.
The introduction of new modes, Aeolian, Ionian and their plagal
companions (Aeolian is the predecessor of our minor, Ionian that
of our major scale), the development of harmony, the intensive de-
velopment of musica ficta, the introduction of chromaticism and of
harmonic modulation, brought about a crisis in the modal system
which was to lead gradually to modern tonality.
5. The most radical innovation in the process of composition in
the Renaissance is the transition from a successive to a simultaneous
conception of parts: in the case of simultaneous harmonic conception
it is the newly acquired capacity to "think in harmonies," in the
case of simultaneous polyphonic conception it is the projection of
each part in connection with every other part. The result is a com-
pletely unified musical organism.
6. Unprecedented was the enlargement of the tonal world: the
tone space was extended in both directions, instruments were being
built in lower and higher registers than ever before. The territory
of remote tones in the circle of fifths, inaccessible before because of
the monopoly held by Pythagorean tuning laws, was newly dis-
covered; chromaticism was introduced, the use of quartertones was
considered and tried experimentally; harmonic modulation was
discovered.
7. None of this was used for its own sake. The wealth of new
musical means was born from the overwhelmingdesire to express
and paint in tones the outer world of nature and the inner reality of
man. The expansion of the text repertoryof the Renaissancecom-
poser correspondedto the enlargementof tonal means. "Homo sum
nil humani mihi alienum puto" was a sentiment that the Renais-
sance composer could utter with full justification. Thus the real
heart of Renaissance music is the new relation to the word and to
language. To sing the text in each part so that it can be understood
and felt, so that the subject matter becomes, as it were, "visible
throughtones," this is the deepest motivation of the stylistic revolu-
tion in Renaissancemusic. Though this can still be demonstratedin
much greater detail, it may be said that this is the contributionof
humanism to music. It was not necessary,as has been claimed, for
the Renaissancemusician to know actual Greekmusic. It was suffi-
cient for him to read Plato to discoverthat the intimate relationship
with poetry was at the root of Greek musical thought and practice.
But the preoccupationwith chromatic and with quartertone com-
position, too, had its source in the Greek chromaticand enharmonic
genders, while the idea of adapting different modes, rhythms, and
genders to different texts was at the bottom of the Greek theory of
musical ethos. This humanistic spirit, equally with the progressive
" harmonization" of music, was responsiblefor the vocalization of
polyphony and for the emergenceof the new choral art.
8. The great freedom with regard to the performanceof music
for voices, or instruments,or a combinationof both, facilitated also,
for better or for worse,the developmentof the vocal and instrumental
virtuoso. Polyphonicpieces could be sung by one voice accompanied
by lute, harpsichord,or organ; they could also be played entirely by
instruments. The vehicle of virtuoso exhibitionism was the art of
improvisingembellishmentsand coloraturas,an art assiduously cul-
tivated by singers and players. The endless warningsagainst excess
and improperapplication, coupled with all the instructions on how
to improvise embellishments,show what sins against style and taste
were committedout of the desirefor individualdistinction. It is safe
to make two statements in this connection: the virtuosois a Renais-
sance phenomenon; the virtuoso precedes virtuoso music.
9. Though instrumentalmusic learnedto walk hand in hand with
its older sister, vocal music, it was in the Renaissance that instru-
mental music becameindependentand developeda numberof auton-
omous forms from which could develop prelude, toccata, fugue and
ostinato forms. The emancipation of instrumental music was fur-
thered by the vast expansion of the instrumentarium,by the tre-
mendous changes undergone by every type of instrument, and by the

keen sense for timbre and color developed during the Renaissance
and leading to the art of orchestration in the Baroque.
10. Whether it be improvements of old or invention of new in-
struments, whether it is a matter of resurrecting ancient music or of
probing into unexplored tonal regions, whether it concerns new tun-
ing systems, new modal theories, new calculations of intervals, new
melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or formal designs-every musical enter-
prise of the Renaissance is characterized by an endless curiosity, a
firm-if at times concealed-refusal to abide by authority for
authority's sake, an intrepid pioneering spirit and an inexhaustible
joy in theoretical speculation, personal and literary controversy and
debate, and practical experimentation.
I should like to conclude with one last illustration that shows
these traits in a rare combination. Nicola Vicentino of Ferrara, in
his enthusiasm for resurrecting the half and quarter tone music of
the Greeks, constructed a marvelously complicated harpsichord which
he named archicembalo (described in the fifth book of his treatise).
This instrument had no fewer than six manuals, and a confusing
multitude of strings and tones, for it divided every whole tone not
into two, but into five intermediary tones. The octave thus had not
12, but 31 tones. The archicembalo became the delight of the con-
noisseurs; imitations and variations of it were constructed through-
out the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also became the
headache of tuners. But while the artistic daring, the acoustical
mathematical imagination and the technical ingenuity spent on it
may be impressive, it is more surprising to hear Vicentino give among
the reasons for inventing this instrument the following (book IV, ch.
29): "The inflections and intervals that all nations of the world
use in their native speech do not proceed only in whole and half
tones, but also in quarter tones and even smaller intervals, so that
with the division of our harpsichord we can accommodate all the
nations of the world." And now Vicentino mentions specifically
German, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Turkish, and Jewish music.
Surely, it would not have occurred to a medieval musician to build
an instrument not only to facilitate the reconstruction of Greek music
but to allow the infidel Turk and the erring Jew to intone their
chants as well as the orthodox Christian. Through this musical
instrument Vicentino erected a symbolic bridge which stretches from
ancient Greece to the new West, from the Renaissance to the era
of the Enlightenment and right down to the century of the United
Nations.
Queens College (Currently: The Institute for Advanced Study).

EDWARD LOWINSKY - Music in The Culture of The Renaissance

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EDWARD LOWINSKY - Music in The Culture of The Renaissance

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Music in the Culture of the Renaissance

Author(s): Edward E. Lowinsky

Of all cultural manifestations none has been so long and so con-

Chronologically, a good case can be made for a rough delimitation

number had increased to 24, in the years following and throughout

fessional musician into the church service. Needless to say, this

occasion of the arrival of a royal heir; during wartime a Da pacem

them music played an essential,in some of them a central,role. The

the model for the academieswas the Platonic academy in Florence

tion how many of the secular melodies that composers immortalized

town musicians very well. They appeared at all receptions of digni-

a state of ecstasy and to have played on the scale of their emotions

as an example of the constant need of reconstructing the historical

the figureof the sufferingChrist comes to occupy a place comparable

Very conspicuousis the use of psalm texts and especially psalms

Decipimur votis tempore fallimur We are deluded by promises. Time

Already at the beginning of the century ancient poetry had ap-

sel, 1950), no. 4.

Such was the power of music in the Renaissance that it evoked

143; idem, English Madrigal Verse, 1588-1632 (Oxford, 1920).

To be sure, satires on nuns and monks were as old as the in-

vention of which must be credited to the ars nova. The medieval

and "familiar style" should be strictly limited to this harmonic

composer to use this technique not as an occasional device-as such

power of sound, the multicolored brilliance of modulatory harmony,

poraries. The sixteenth century saw a process of interpenetration

Reformed artists living in those same Netherlands which, twenty

Postquam cantus est factus et ordi- After the composition is finished,

Chant which was held by medieval writers to have been dictated to

in which Magellan started his circumnavigationof the globe, Adri-

the Mass. Obviously, the Renaissance composer must have felt

was entirely free in those small improvisatory pieces called prelude,

Germanic North, which is responsible for the emergence of fugal

The invention of a rhythmical notation strictly proportionally

parts, all of them canonic.74 Obviously, one cannot compose a canon

Compared to the towering contrapuntal constructions of the time

absence of Greek models this attempt was doomed to failure from

highly controversial treatise principles were enunciated that were to

musical development during the Renaissance, to which the English

mendous changes undergone by every type of instrument, and by the

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