Renaissance Music  Johannes Ockeghem (~1410-1497)

 We will start our journey into renaissance music with Johannes Ockeghem, the dominating figure of the Netherlands composers, who also had large influence on the music of Europe during late 15th century. His music includes both sacral and secular compositions, about fifty in total.

 His innovations included lowering of bass voices below c (not heard of before!) which gave rise to a darker sound. In combination with long melody phrases and few rests, this created a more complex sound. Ockeghem also wrote sections of his compositions by omitting one or two voices (only duets/trios), or made all voices sing in the same rhythmic pattern. These two tricks shaped the contrast between sections of a composition - something to think about when writing guitar songs, perhaps?

 Ockeghems church music was filled by mysterious sonority. He achieved this mood by several means: his melodies had constricted ranges, they followed smooth rhythms, there was no imitation of the voices (except in few compositions, see next paragraph). Also, chord progressions seemed to come randomly, i.e. with no systematic feel to them.

 Very few compositions, like Missa prolationum, contained imitated voices, but they were so ingeniously hidden within the music, that it takes a good ear to find them. When he wrote imitated voices, he could use a so-called mensuration canon - two voices move at different rates, where the relationship is that of augmentation (doubling note values), diminution (decreasing note values), or other more complex combinations. The composition mentioned involves a double canon, listen to it if you have a chance and see if you can hear the imitations.Next, you might like to write something like mensuration canon on your guitar? It is challenging, but very nice if you can hide it and get a natural flow from it!!!

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