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Chapter 4The Emergence of Renaissance Style

Tuesday, September 4, 12

Consonance and Dissonance: Trusting the Ear

• empirical and practical challenge to traditional music theory

• new attitude questioned or dismissed large body of music and musical thought of past

• marked a shift in outlook, and characterized the musical Renaissance


Sonority: The Contenance Angloise

• something new in music of John Dunstable

• “English guise” - characterized as “new way of composing with lively consonances”

• new kind of sonority with music dominated by thirds, fifths, and sixths

• Dunstable and his followers used these intervals described as panconsonance - harmony that makes ample use of triads


Sonority: The Contenance Angloise Dunstable Quam pulchra es

• panconsonant style

- triads predominant and dissonances are ornamental (HDM p. 639)

- note the triads in mm. 1-2; also the dissonant escape tone

• 3 equal-weight voices (i.e., not melody with accompaniment)

• not based on a cantus firmus or other preexisting material

• text’s structure drives the music’s phrase structure

• chorale or hymn like texture


Sonority: The Contenance Angloise Fauxbourdon and Faburden

• related but distinct

• both use mix of improvised and notated lines

• net result is many first inversion triads

• part of the new sound of Renaissance music

• Du Fay’s Conditor alme siderum uses the fauxbourdon technique


Sonority: The Contenance Angloise Fauxbourdon and Faburden

• Fauxbourdon

- french for false bass

- Burgundian technique

- one improvised line, making many 63 chords

- improvised line P4 below top line

• Faburden

- English technique involving two improvised lines

- upper improvised line is P4 above notated line

- lower improvised line is 3rds and 5ths below notated line

- results in many 63 chords (first inversion triads)


Sonority: The Contenance Angloise Du Fay’s Nuper rosarum flores

• New Sonority, Old Structure:

- motet Nuper rosarum flores (The rose blossoms)

- written for the consecration of newly completed dome of the cathedral in Florence 1436

- isorhythmic structure with progressive sonorities

- http://toddtarantino.com/hum/dufaynuper.html


http://toddtarantino.com/hum/dufaynuper.html

http://toddtarantino.com/hum/dufaynuper.html

Isorhythm(see Bonds glossary)

• structural principle developed in 14th century

• typically in the tenor

• color refers to a repeated series of pitches in the structural line

• talea refers to a repeated series of durations in the structural line


Isorhythm in Du Fay’s Nuper rosarum flores

color (i.e., pitch series) comes from Introit Terribilis est locus iste (see Bonds p. 110)


Josquin’s Ave Maria...virgo serena and the Style of the Renaissance

• among the best-know and most widely admired music works of its time

• uses “points of imitation” linking the musical structure directly to the text



• Use of a single text

• Treatment of the Text:

- extols Virgin Mary

- five internal strophes allude to five major feasts in honor of Mary

- text is not liturgical



• Texture

- pervading imitation - musical ideas imitatively stated in all voices throughout an entire work or section of a work

- points of imitation help us delineate form

- each strophe moves between imitative counterpoint and chordal texture



• Cadential Structure

- each section is generally self-contained depending on strength of its closing cadence

- no unifying themes or rhythmic patterns throughout the work

- paratactic form: the structure consists of a succession of closed, unconnected and unrelated units (Bonds p. 116)



• Mode

- individual voices generally move within confines of particular mode

- written in transposed hypolydian (on C)

- later, “...16th-century theorist Heinrich Glarean cited this motet as an example of the hypoionian mode...” (Bonds p. 118)

- see Bonds p. 38 for modes



• Melody

- use of conjunct motion - stepwise melodic motion with occasional leaps of more than a fifth

- large leaps are generally followed by move in opposite direction

- opening comes from plainchant melody(see Bonds p. 118)



• Rhythm

- avoids strong sense of meter or consistently patterned rhythm

- sections become more animated as they progress, then slow down toward the close

• tactus about the rate of a human heartbeat (ca. 60 bpm)

- see Bonds p. 118 for definition



• Harmony

- harmony perceived as a by-product of voice leading and not as an end

- our notion of triads did not yet exist

- intervals used to determine consonance and dissonance

- intervals of a 3rd and 6th are common


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