Characteristics of Renaissance Music

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Recommended: Compare and contrast medieval and renaissance music

Gregorian chant was still used as the basis of many polyphonic church compositions. The chant evolved into the tenor part. During the Renaissance, composers of sacred music continued the practice of keeping the original chant as the basis for the main melody; they called this chant the cantus firmus. The cantus firmus did not necessarily have to occupy the tenor part, although that was still the most common place for it.

Although Renaissance composers, particularly sacred music composers, continued to use church modes, they slowly started adopting modes that are equivalent to our present major and minor scales. Probably the most important development in Renaissance music, due in part to the work of Dunstable and other English composers, was giving harmony a much more important role within the composition.

Characteristics of Renaissance Music

Below are some of the basic characteristics of the music.

Form

•Mostly polyphonic, with the cantus firmus (chant melody) in the lowest voice.

•All sorts of imitation between the voices, some of it very complicated, is an important to organizing element.

•Composers often use pre-existing music and often include the entire piece within a larger composition.

•Compositions have a number of sections. Often, each section is the setting of only one line of a text, with rarely any repetition of music from one section to another.

•Repetition and contrast are used in dance forms.

Melody

•Melody is the most important factor in Renaissance music. Harmony and/or rhythm cannot be easily separated from the melody.

•Melodies, even those for instruments, are very vocal in style. The range is rarely more than one octave.

Rhythm

•Rhythm is free from strict meters, and the rhythmic phrases are generally long and overlap between the voices.

•Rhythms are often very complicated.

Harmony

•Harmony is a result of the various lines sounding together, but not as a purposeful chord.

Texture

•Texture is mostly polyphonic, until the 16th century, when some sections are homophonic for contrast and variety.

Timbre

•For much of the Renaissance, the human voice was the chosen timbre.

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