A Quick History

One of the questions posed in our last class was “How has music changed over the 500 years we have studied thus far?” An easy answer to this loaded query might be “A LOT”, but let’s look a little closer.

Music in context of the Western classical tradition has its origins in the Roman Catholic Church. We began this semester studying plainchant liturgy, which dates to pre-10^th century. Aside from courtly music, the church served as music’s residence for the next few hundred years due to its ubiquity in culture and monetary power. We see the development of polyphony occur in the church from the troping of chants and the birth of the motet. Polyphonic ideas grew in this arena, notably at Notre Dame through the work of Leonin and Perotin. As musical ideas expanded, new compositional techniques were needed. This gave rise to Franconian notation, developed by the theorist Franco of Cologne and described in his treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis. With this development, musicians became aware of duration and note values. Time imposes itself on music.

The Ars Nova- early 14^th century- continued the progress of measuring and notating musical time. Such progress brought about notational issues, which lead to the development of mensuration. This was a turning point for Western Music. Until then, triple rhythms dominated due to their symbolic value of divine perfection. Shaking the bias toward triple rhythms opened unchartered territory for composers of the Ars Nova.

After nearly half of Europe’s population was wiped out by the gruesome Black Death pandemic (1348-1350), secularization of culture began to increase, taking power away from the church. This gradual shift produced the secular formes fixes in France as well as the madrigal, ritornello, and ballata in Italy. Composers of the Ars Subtilior- late 14^th century- refined these forms using extreme subtleties in their compositions.

As the church’s grip continued to loosen, secular thought gave rise to Humanism. In this tradition we see the glorification of human emotion. Thus, composers shifted their attention towards revealing the emotion veiled in the texts of their music. This movement set the stage for vocal music of the 16^th century, particularly the madrigals we are discussing this week.

Il bianco e dolce cigno is filled with text painting. The text, although it appears innocent, proves to be evocative. Arcadelt matches the misleading sweetness of the poem in his composition by using gentle harmonies of thirds and sixths. The height of the piece occurs in m. 20-24 where Arcadelt employs minor harmonies and chromaticism to paint the suggestive text “and I die happy” – death drawing parallel meaning with sexual climax. This piece was sure to satisfy the amateur musicians who likely performed it in its earliest years.

Clergy gathered at the Council of Trent

Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli satisfies a different passion. In response to the Reformation, which challenged the Church’s authority, Catholic leaders were compelled to reevaluate the stance of Catholicism on a variety of topics, music being one of them. This occurred at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Polyphonic music was a heavily debated issue among the clergy gathered at Trent. Palestrina, as legend has it, singlehandedly saved polyphony from being taken out of Catholic worship by composing sacred music that did not obscure the text. The Credo from this mass is quite remarkable for two reasons. First, it is written predominantly for six voices, which Palestrina employs equally throughout the movement. Second, the credo text is by far the longest text of the mass ordinary. The fact that Palestrina was able to use such vocal forces for such an extended text all the while satisfying the high expectations of 16^th century church fathers is significant. One can imagine Palestrina clearing the air with “minimal dissonance and gently pulsing rhythmic flow” in a room full of stuffy old men as the sounds of his mass “wrapped the listeners in a blanket of mystical peace” (Seaton).