The Late Renaissance

The music of the late 16th century shifted towards higher quantities of secular language, prominently by means of madrigals and songs with accompaniment. Church music however did not rest unturned. The reformation period saw great changes in approaches to composition, as we shall see.

   Following Luther s struggles to change the Church, the music in his country changed as well. The most notable aspect for the people was singing in German (as opposed to Latin). This fact exposed itself in many german chorales  originally songs made of a text and a tune, but later also expanded into richer textures by counterpoint with its added voices. A special type of a german chorale was contrafacta, in which the melody was ripped off  from a secular song, but set to a religious text.

  Not only Germany was affected by reformationism. In France, where Calvin had a lot to say, all song texts that did not came from the Bible were banned. In England, the Latin liturgy was replaced by an English equivalent, which gradually gave rise to new forms of composition  the Service and the anthem.

   The political trends had to be opposed  thought the Pope  and so the Council of Trent was gathered to discuss the necessary changes in the Church that would turn the people back to Catholicism. Interestingly, also the music was discussed. Here, the new progressions, as seen in Germany, were severely criticised for their incorporation of secular spirits, noisy instruments, complicated polyphony that made the words undistinguishable, and so on. So the Church gave order to remove all impurities , but did not specify any technical details. Anyway, what happened was that some composers tried to compose in some new techniques, without going back to the Middle Ages. The new style was characterized by smoother melodies, regular rhythm, more homophony, and diatonic harmony.

  And so a man named Palestrina showed up with a lifework of a.o. 102 Masses and 450 motets. His style was based on imitative counterpoint where the voices were sung in continuous rhythm  thus removing some of the complexity that the Church condemned. The melodies were stepwise, with varying note lengths, seldom repeated notes, and a small range. This kind of pure melodic writing was coupled with a pure diatonic harmony, wherein no chromaticism were to be found. The harmony was made up of the separate voices, that combined together in triads, and moved over a bass line that often contained fourth and fifth skips, marking the what we today call subdominant and dominant chords. Other composers of this trend were Orlando di Lasso and William Byrd; however their style was slightly different.

  In summary, the period of late renaissance paved way for the new baroque style with its:
    - homophonic writing invading the polyphonic texture,
    - regular rhythm,
    - clear harmony that revealed signs of tonality.

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