Transition to the Renaissance / the Early Renaissance (c. 1400 - 1600)

                "Renaissance" means "re-birth" and it was the revival of ancient Greek and Roman 

        values in education and the arts.  Although commonly defined as 1400 - 1600, or 1450 - 1600,

         the beginnings of the Renaissance be seen as early as the early 1300s.   

                The intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism, derived from the 

        concept of Roman humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that 

        of Protagoras, who said that "man is the measure of all things".  This new thinking became 

        manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature.  Although the printing press with 

        movable type was developed c. 1450, it took about a century for Renaissance thinking to move 

        to northern Europe from its birthplace in Italy.  The Renaissance was greatly propelled by the 

        arrival in Italy of Greek Scholars with ancient texts following the fall of Constantinople to the 

        Turks in 1453.  

History

1167 - 1179  -  Republic of Sienna established

Ambrogio Lorenzetti - The Effects of Good Government (1339) 

1237 - 1367  -  Giotto  
c.  1300        -  The rise of banking and trade begins creating a new middle class between

                   the nobility and the peasants.  

1310 - 1314  -  Roman de Fauvel written by Gervais du Bus.  Fauvel is a horse who rises to 
                         prominence in the French royal court.  The book satirizes the self-serving 
                         hedonism and hypocrisy of men, and the excesses of the ruling estates, both 
                         secular and ecclesiastical.  "Fauvel" can be broken down to mean "false veil", 
                         and also forms an acrostic F-A-V-V-E-L with the letters standing for the human 
                         vices: Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Variability (Fickleness), Envy, and Laxity. 

1304 - 1374  -  Petrarch - scholar and poet - The "father of Renaissance humanism"

1315 - 1317  -  The Great Famine in northern Europe (north of the Alps)

1320                 Dante Alighieri finishes the Divine Comedy

1337 - 1360  -   First phase of the Hundred Years' War

1347 - 1351  -   The Black Death rips through Europe, at least 75 million die.

1378 - 1417  -   The Western Schism (two popes, Rome & Avignon)

1387 - 1400  -    Geoffrey Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales 



Trecento - Italian artistic period - c. 1300 -1425)

        The Trecento can be seen as the dawn of the Italian Renaissance.   

        The leading painters were Giotto di Bondone, as well as painters of the Sienese School,  
        Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio were the leading writers of the age, writing in vernacular 
        Italian instead of Latin. 

        Top composers included the renowned Francesco Landini, as well as Maestro Piero, 
       Gherardello da Firenze, Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia, Paolo "Tenorista" 
       da Firenze, Niccolò da Perugia, Bartolino da Padova, Antonio Zachara da Teramo, 
       Matteo da Perugia, and Johannes Ciconia.  

        The most popular works of the Trecento composers were called madrigals, but these are 
       not related to the better known madrigals of the late Renaissance.  


c. 1400 - 1480:     Early Renaissance

     1399    -   Giovani de Medici founds the Medici Bank.  His descendants Cosimo and
                      Lorenzo the Magnificent will finance the Florentine Renaissance.   

         An increasingly important musical idea throughout the Renaissance is to reduce the
        complexity of polyphonic lines to let a main melody stand out so the words are more
        intelligible.  This will be important for the advent of opera c. 1600 when complex 
        stories need to be set to music.
 

       Personal emotions are expressed in music with a new focus on sensuality.

        Five notes are added to the medieval octave, making our modern 12 note octave.

Transitional composers:

Leonel Power  (c. 1370-1785 - 1445)  English

Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376-7 - 1445) German


John Dunstaple (or Dunstable)  (c. 1390 - 1453)    English

      Dunstaple develops the use of the "imperfect" 3rd note in the scale, creating triads, or 
      chords.  The triads are "major" for a natural third, and "minor" for a flatted third.  

      During the Hundred Years' War, Dunstaple takes the third harmony to France.  He influ-
      enced the "Burgundian school" (first "Franco-Flemish" school).  The most prominent 
       secular forms used used by this school were the four formes fixes (rondeau, ballade, 
       virelai, and bergerette), all generically known as chansons.  Of the four, the rondeau 
       was by far the most popular.  

      Most of the rondeau were in three voices, and in French, though there are a few in other 
      languages.  In most of the rondeau, the uppermost voice (the "superius") was texted, and 
      the other voices were most likely played by instruments.  Most Franco-Flemish composers 
      also wrote sacred music in Latin; this was to remain true for the next several generations. 
      They wrote both masses and motets, as well as cycles of Magnificats.


Other Important Early Renaissance Franco-Flemish composers:

        Guillaume Du Fay  (1397 - 1474)  


          Rondo  [Ce moys de may  (The Month of May - rondeau for 3 voices)  1:55 ]

           Motet  [Missa L' Homme Armé (The Armed Man)] 

                      Du Fay took a popular song and used the melody as the cantus firmus for this 
                      polyphonic Mass. 

            [Nuper rosarum flores (The Rose Flowers Recently)  2:10]

                  Du Fay wrote this work for the consecration of Filippo Brunelleschi's dome 

                  of the Florence Cathedral on March 25, 1436.   

 

        Gilles de Binche (called Binchois);  ca. 1400 – 1460)

         Johannes Ockeghem  (1425 - 1497)  Franco-Flemish

 [Ockeghem - Déploration sur la mort de Binchois  5:21]

        Notice the complexity of the polyphony and how difficult it is to distinguish the individual 

        words.