Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Generation Post–Josquin 1520–1550
  - Secular Song in Italy
  - Secular Song Outside of Italy
  - The Rise of Instrumental Music
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century
The Rise of Instrumental Music
During the years 1450–1550 more instrumental music was written down. Before this period most notated pieces of instrumental music were transcriptions of vocal works. Instruments continued to play vocal music, but composers also began composing with instruments in mind. There are five categories of instrumental music.
  1. Historical Background

    1. Before 1450 few instrumental works were notated, and most of these were transcriptions of vocal pieces.

    2. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, instrumental music was tied to vocal music.
      1. Instruments doubled or replaced voices in vocal compositions.
      2. Solo and ensemble instrumental music derived from vocal music.

    3. During the sixteenth century more instrumental music was written down.

    4. Instruments continued to perform music written for voice.

    5. Instruments (see CHWM, p. 144 and color plate V)
      1. Built in sets of four to seven like instruments spanning the soprano to the bass ranges. These sets were called "chests" or "consorts."
      2. Wind instruments included double reeds (shawms), capped-reeds (krummhorn), transverse flutes, cornetts (wood or ivory with cupped mouthpieces), trumpets, sackbuts (ancestor of the modern trombone).
      3. Viols differed from modern violin family.
        1. Fretted neck
        2. Six strings tuned a perfect fourth apart with a major third in the middle
        3. Delicate tone, played without vibrato
      4. Lute
        1. The most popular household instrument
        2. Pear-shaped, with one single and five double strings
        3. Tuned in fourths with a third in the middle
        4. Plucked with fingers
        5. Fretted neck
        6. Used for solo performance, to accompany singing, or in ensembles
        7. Music for lute notated in tablature, notation that showed where to place the finger on the string (see illustration in NAWM 44)
      5. Keyboard instruments
        1. Church organs by about 1500 were similar to instruments of today.
        2. Clavichord used a metal tangent to strike the string and had a soft tone
        3. Harpsichord used for solo and ensemble playing in moderate-sized rooms.

  2. Dance Music

    1. People of breeding were expected to be expert social dancers in the sixteenth century.

    2. The earliest type of instrumental music to gain independence was dance music.

    3. Dance medleys, sets of two or three dances
      1. Usually a slow dance in duple meter paired with a fast dance in triple meter on the same tune as a variation
      2. Pavane and galliard pairing a favorite combination in France and England
      3. Passamezzo and saltarello combination popular in Italy
      4. Dance music was eventually stylized, or composed with the features of dance music but not intended to be used for dancing.
      5. After the middle of the sixteenth century the favored pairing was the allemande, a dance in moderate duple time, with the courante. This pair formed the basis of the later dance suite.

  3. Improvisatory pieces

    1. Evidence of improvisatory practice from written dance music
      1. Ornamentation on a given melody
      2. Addition of one or more contrapuntal parts to a given melody
      3. Improvisation on a borrowed tenor

    2. Compositions in improvisatory style are among the earliest examples of instrumental music not meant for dancing.

    3. Compositions in free improvisatory style
      1. Not based on a preexisting melody
      2. No definite meter or form
      3. Luis Milán (ca. 1500–ca. 1561).
        1. Fantasias for lute based on vocal pieces
        2. Publised in his Libro de musica de vihuela de mano intitulado El Maestro (Book of Music for the Vihuela Entitled The Teacher, Valencia, 1536)

    4. Toccatas (from the verb toccare, to touch)
      1. Chief form of improvisatory keyboard music in the second half of the century
      2. Possibly based on lute improvisational style
      3. Claudio Merulo (1533–1604), Venetian organist (e.g., CHWM, ex. 7.8)
        1. Embellishments and scale passages in freely varied rhythms
        2. Sustained notes are idiomatic for the organ.
      4. Also called fantasia, intonazione, and prelude

  4. Contrapuntal genres

    1. Ricercari (also ricercar)
      1. Ricercari used series of fugal sections.
      2. Earliest were brief improvisatory pieces for lute.
      3. Keyboard ricercari used more imitation.
      4. By 1540 ricercari consisted of successions of different themes, each developed in imitation with overlapping cadences, similar to motets.
      5. More instrumental in character, the pieces used freer voice leading and instrumental embellishments.

    2. English fantasias, or "fancies" were similar to ricercari.

  5. Canzona and Sonata

    1. Canzona (canzona da sonar or chanson to be played) for both ensembles and solo instruments
      1. Styled on the French chanson
      2. Light, fast-moving, strongly rhythmic
      3. Simple contrapuntal texture
      4. Characteristic opening rhythm: long-shortshort (e.g., half note followed by two quarter notes)
      5. Earliest Italian examples written for organ
      6. Ensemble canzonas from ca. 1580
      7. Series of contrasting sections (e.g., HWM, ex. 7.11)

    2. Sonata
      1. Venetian Sonata; sacred version of the canzona
      2. Series of sections each based on a different subject or on variants of a single subject
      3. Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1557–1612); Sonata Pian' e Forte from Sacrae symphoniae (1597)
        1. Double-chorus motet for instruments
        2. Among the first instrumental ensemble pieces to designate specific instruments
        3. Instruments included cornett and sackbuts in different sizes.
        4. One of earliest instances of dynamics—notation indicated pian (soft) for groups alone and forte (loud) for both instrumental groups together

  6. Variations

    1. Improvisation on a tune to accompany dancing pre-dates the earliest published examples.

    2. Ostinato patterns repeated over and over in the bass could serve as a basis for variations (passamezzo antico and passamezzo moderno, which derived from the pavane).

    3. Variations on standard melodic formulas

    4. English keyboard players (virginalists), especially William Byrd (1543–1623)
      1. Most comprehensive collection of keyboard music is the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (manuscript, hand-copied between 1609 and 1619).
      2. Most of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book variations are on slow dance tunes or familiar songs.
      3. Short, simple, regular melodies were the favorite subjects for keyboard variations.
      4. Each variation preserves the main structural features of the theme.
      5. Melody may appear intact in the sets of variations or broken up by figuration.
      6. Example: NAWM 46, Pavana Lachrymae by William Byrd
        1. Variation on John Dowland's air, Flow, my tears (NAWM 44)
        2. The original air used the form of the pavane, with three repeating strains.
        3. Byrd adds a variation after each strain.
        4. The right hand outlines the tune.
        5. Both hands play decorative turns, figurations, and scale patterns in imitation.

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