MUSICAL RENAISSANCE
HISTORY OF MUSIC
CATHOLIC MUSIC
. The main forms of Catholic Church were mass and motet, in a choral-polyphony style, with several trained singers to each voice-part, at least four parts from the higher-pitched to the lower-pitched: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.
. Much of the religious music was for the Catholic Church, and it survived by manuscripts. It was primarily for a Capella choir with texts in Latin.
. This music used the imitative counterpoint: one voice-part introduces a snatch of tune that’s immediately imitated by another voice-part.
FORMS
MOTET: The most important form of religious polyphony, in Latin and brief. IN the line of the previous counterpoint without its complexity. Role of the music: " it was not to please the ear, but to help the devoted heighten theirs souls toward God".
MASS: Musical form that puts together all the pieces of the liturgy (composed as a motete or by means of others techniques of imitation and variation).
COMPOSERS OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, Cristóbal Morales, Tomás Luis de Victoria.
COUNCIL OF TRENT
In 1562, came the sittings of that famous Council of Trent which determined so many points in church procedure and politics. The Council expressed itself as dissatisfied with the prevailing style of church music. It was too frivolous, too much tinged with secularity, they said. In fact, they proclaimed the need for a higher and purer style. Now Palestrina’s opportunity came. He had proved himself a master of music, and the Pope suggested to him that he should produce a Mass in the manner demanded by the Council. Palestrina jumped at the idea, and by 1565 had completed three Masses, which a Commission of Cardinals declared to be the very thing that was wanted to save church music from the utter degradation with which it had been threatened. Palestrina wrote in a style pure and serene, free from agitation or excitement, with no sentimentality and no affectation. Palestrina died in the fullness of his fame in February 1594.