Page 42 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

40 INTRODUCTION

Missa Rex seculorum is Franco-Flemish Thomas Tallis’s
written as a cantus firmus composer Josquin 40-part motet
Mass in the influential Desprez sets music to Spem in alium, is
English style, attributed the Ordinary of the composed, featuring
either to John Dunstaple Mass in his Missa eight choirs of five
or Leonel Power. Pange lingua. voices each.

C.1430 C.1515 C.1570

C.1460 1568 1572

Guillaume Dufay Italian composer and Spanish composer
composes the Mass diplomat Alessandro Tomás Luis de
L’Homme armé, Striggio premieres Victoria writes his
employing the third his motet Ecce first collection of
interval in the scale to beatam lucem in motets while working
create a sweet sound. Munich, Germany. in Rome.

he cultural movement plainchant melody. Echoing medieval times was being
known as the Renaissance the Renaissance trend toward challenged, and in 1517 Martin
T emerged in Italy as early increasing secularization, he Luther triggered the Reformation.
as the 14th century. However, a started to use secular melodies Much of northern Europe converted
distinctively Renaissance style of instead of plainchant as a basis for to the Protestant Church, which
music did not manifest itself until his Masses, which were in a richly had a very different attitude to
some years later. It first flourished expressive polyphonic style. He and music for their services, preferring
in the Netherlands, at the court other composers at the Burgundian simple hymns and melodies for
of Philip the Good of Burgundy court, including Gilles Binchois, the congregation to sing rather
(1396–1467). The composers there, Johannes Ockeghem, and one of than polyphonic Masses sung only
although Franco-Flemish by birth, the finest composers of the early by the choir. Such music became
were cosmopolitan by nature. The Renaissance, Josquin Desprez, did the foundation of a distinctly
leading light of the Franco-Flemish not restrict themselves to sacred Germanic musical tradition.
school, Guillaume Dufay, inspired music and also wrote secular The Reformation had, however,
by the Ars Nova polyphony that motets and chansons. provoked a reaction in the Catholic
he had heard while in Italy, found world—the Counter-Reformation—
a way to break with the medieval New challenge in which the Church defended
style and began to redefine The Franco-Flemish school of some of its practices while
Renaissance music. polyphony dominated the music examining and reforming others.
One of Dufay’s innovations of the early Renaissance, but in One of the things that came under
was his use of the cantus firmus, the 16th century, things changed scrutiny was the music for church
the technique of composing dramatically. The power that the services. Many in the Catholic
a polyphonic piece around a Catholic Church had wielded in Church were uncomfortable

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