Page 51 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

RENAISSANCE 1400–1600 49

See also: Messe de Notre Dame 36–37 ■ Missa l’homme armé 42 ■ Missa Pange lingua 43 ■ Spem in alium 44 ■
Great Service 52–53 ■ Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott 78–79

bellowing, and stammering, they
more closely resemble cats in
January than flowers in May.”
The reform of notation in the
14th century had, for the first time,
given composers the ability to set
down almost any musical idea with
precision. Since then, the Catholic
Church had at times encouraged,
and at other times censured, their
tendency to embellish music and
add ever-increasing degrees of
complexity and subtlety.
At the end of the 15th century,
the daily Mass was usually sung
to plainchant. However, if the
institution hosting the service had
the resources, the Ordinary of the
Mass (the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo,
Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus
Dei) might be treated to many
varieties of embellishment. In the
1490s, several writers noted the
presence of a cornett player at
High Mass as part of the chapel
of Philip IV of Burgundy. They do
not mention what he played; his
mere presence, as a wind player
in the chapel, was enough to be so that by the 1530s their presence The Council of Trent met 25 times
remarkable. Wind players, who had at a polyphonic High Mass became in 18 years to discuss its response to
previously improvised, began to less unusual to congregants. the “heresies” of Protestantism and
hone their skills in reading music While the contribution of wind to clarify Catholic doctrine and liturgy.
and accompanying such choirs, players to church music would have
been impressive, the resonance of Cirillo was not always uppermost
a brass ensemble, if badly handled, in a composer’s mind. Franco-
might hinder the clear delivery of Flemish musicians often paraded
the text. The Spanish composer their skill in handling complex
Francisco Guerrero encouraged his polyphonic structures in
cornett players to improvise florid compositions of extraordinary
[Palestrina’s] Stabat ornaments but to take turns, as virtuosity. In a Mass in four parts,
Mater … captivates the “when they ornament together it for instance, certain sections might
human soul. makes such absurdities as would be written in the manuscript
Franz Liszt stop up the ears.” with only three parts notated, so
that the singer had to “find” the
Little thought for the text fourth part by following the logic of
Even when a Mass was sung as the other three parts—effectively
unaccompanied polyphony, the solving a riddle. The composer
clarity of expression favored by might make the singers’ job even ❯❯

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