Renaissance Music  an overview

The musical style of renaissance is known for its use of at least four voices of similar timbre, in contrast with medieval three-voice formulas for different voice ranges. Although the same timbre might feel somehow monotonous, each voice was important in itself. They all carried the leading motives built with imitation technique, but even then, the treble was sometimes given more attention than the other voices. Furthermore, treble together with bass were also used for establishing tonalities in the composition.

 As you might have guessed, such settings of music were performed a cappella  i.e. without accompaniment, altough sometimes an organist could have joined the choir. This practice was common only in the earlier period of renaissance, and soon other instruments were bound together with the singers during performances. Indeed, these instruments were so influential that eventually, attempts were made to write music that could purely convey feelings by music that did not include human voices, or only had one vocal solist.

 The most often used vertical interval relationships were the triads in basic form or of the 1st inversion. (Bear in mind though, that the music was not analyzed in this way at that time!) Moreover, bass received a role of the bearer of the harmonic groundwork, even when imitating motives from other voices. Actually, this idea might be used in songwriting today, so why not try it?

  What about the rhythmic patterns? There were actually two main roads one could use when writing renaissance music  firstly, a fluid rhythm either in contrapuntal or free form; secondly, a strong harmonic framework whose progressions dictate the rhythmic pattern. This is another good idea for sogwriting: for example, we could combine both rhythmic patterns in one song as a means of contrast and variation between different modules of the song. Of course, we could also choose one of the patterns and use it exclusively throughout the whole song.

 With this short introduction to the general style of renaissance music, we will next turn to a series of articles covering musical styles of different composers and geographical locations. (Follow the links on the theory page.)

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