Music of the Renaissance

Between the years of 1450 and the 1600s, music was profoundly affected by the great upheaval of the Renaissance. For European musicians, the Renaissance marked the "advent of a new spirit, the reaction of man's sensibility, even sensuality, against theoretical abstraction and useless refinements in technique" (Pincherle, 1969, p. 34). The Renaissance also marked a new period when composers began to seek more human forms of musical expression, an idea that later inspired the Romantics.

In the 14th Century, the kings and princes of Europe began employing musicians in staffed "chapels," which were an imitation of the Papal Chapel. Chapels became even more fashionable in the 15th century, when every potentate had his own musicians who would accompany him on travels abroad (Reese, 1959, p. 6).

Three notable composers from the first Renaissance school of the 14th century were Dunstable, Dufay and Binchois. Gilles Binchois studied in the choir of the cathedral of Cambrai, which was, by the beginning of the 15th century, one of the chief musical centers in Europe. Other members of the first Renaissance school who studied at the cathedral of Cambrai were Dufay (Reese, 1959, p. 48), celebrated theorist Jean Tinctoris (who wrote "Liber de Arte Contrapuncti" ), Obrecht, Ockeghem, and Josquin des Prez (Pincherele, 1969, p. 37).

During the early 15th century, Josquin des Prez and Jacob Obrecht dominated the musical scene in Europe (Reese, 1959, pp. 184-207). Josquin des Prez was

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ar 1500, Italian composers were deriving their learned music from French and Flemish sources. Nevertheless, Italy had by that time assumed the leadership position in the musical movement in Europe. Italian musicians were beginning to look to popular art for inspiration. Thus, the lyrics of Italian composers became spontaneous and started to depart from overly complex structures. While the secular ballads of the preceding century were still popular throughout Europe, the quality of the Italian composers' poetic texts and frottoles began to attract the attention of the European elite (Reese, 1959, pp. 153-155). Moreover, by 1533, the first madrigals were published in Rome by Verdelot, Arcadelt, and Festa (p. 288) Although the early madrigals were short works, they were also refined so that they could be performed by three or four performers as opposed to an entire choir. Then, between 1550 and 1580, when the madrigals began to mature, the number of singing voices was increased to six and occasionally reverted to polyphonic imitation. By the late 1500s, composers like Gesualdo, Caccini, Orazio, and Vecchio began publishing madrigals in Italy which evidenced a change in the old polyphony to a new style which would be adopted at

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