4. Secular Music: the Entertainment Music

Royalty sought the finest of the composers to employ for entertainment. A single court, or royal family, may employ as many as ten to sixty musicians, singers, and instrumentalists. In Italy, talented women vocalists began to serve as soloists in the courts. Secular pieces for the entertainment of nobility and sacred pieces for the chapel were composed by the court music directors. Musicians were often transported from one castle to another to entertain the court’s patron, travelling in their patron’s entourage.

The Renaissance town musicians performed for civic functions, weddings, socials, and religious ceremonies/services. Due to market, that is, the supply and demand of the expanding Renaissance society, musicians experienced higher status and pay unlike ever before. The Flanders, Low Countries of the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France became a source of musicians who filled many important music positions in Italy. As in the previous era, vocal music maintained its important status over instrumental music.

Germany, England, and Spain also experienced an energetic musical expansion. Secular vocal music became increasingly popular during the Renaissance. In Europe, music was set to poems from several languages, including English, French, Dutch, German, and Spanish. The invention of the printing press led to the publication of thousands of collections of songs that were never before available. One instrument or small groups of instruments were used to accompany a solo voice or groups of solo voices.

4.1 Madrigal

A madrigal is a musical piece for several solo voices set to a short poem. They originated in Italy around 1520. Most madrigals were about love. Madrigals were published by the thousands and learned and performed by cultured aristocrats. Similar to the motet, a madrigal combines both homophonic and polyphonic textures. Unlike the motet, the madrigal is secular and utilizes unusual harmonies and word painting more often. Many of the refrains of these madrigals utilized the text “Fa La” to fill the gaps in the melody or to possibly cover risqué or illicit connotations. Sometimes madrigals are referred to as Renaissance Fa La songs.

A volume of translated Italian madrigals were published in London during the year of 1588, the year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This sudden public interest facilitated a surge of English madrigal writing as well as a spurt of other secular music writing and publication. This music boom lasted for thirty years and was as much a golden age of music as British literature was with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. As the madrigal form was adopted by English composers, it evolved to become lighter and more humorous in style compared to the Italian madrigals.

Focus Composition: “As Vesta Was Descending” by Thomas Weelkes

Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623), a church organist and composer, became one of the finest English madrigal composers. His “As Vesta Was From Latmos Hill Descending” serves as a good example of word painting with the melodic lines following the meaning of the text in performance. Look at the excerpts below to find the word “descending” is set to a descending melodic line and “ascending” to an ascending melodic line.

4.2 Songs with Instrumental Accompaniment and Instrumental Music

Instrumental music in the Renaissance remained largely relegated to social purposes such as dancing, but a few notable virtuosos of the time, including the English lutenist and singer John Dowland, composed and performed music for Queen Elizabeth I. Dowland was a lutenist in 1598 in the court of Christian IV and later in 1612 in the court of King James I. He is known for composing one of the best songs of the Renaissance period, “Flow My Tears”. This imitative piece demonstrates the melancholy humor of the time period. Watch a performance of “Flow My Tears” below (subtitles/closed captions available). For more information about John Dowland, his songs, and the lute, visit here.

Ex. 3.1: “Flow My Tears” by John Dowland

The instruments utilized during the Renaissance era were quite diverse. Local availability of raw materials for the manufacture of the instruments often determined their assembly and accessibility to the public. A renaissance consort is a group of renaissance instrumentalists playing together. A whole consort is an ensemble performing with instruments from the same family. A broken consort is an ensemble comprised of instruments from more than one family. For more information on the Middle Ages and Renaissance instruments, visit here.

With the rebirth of the Renaissance came a resurgence of the popularity of dance. This resurgence led to instrumental dance music becoming the most wide-spread genre for instrumental music. Detailed instruction books for dance also included step orders and sequences that followed the music accompaniment. The first dances started, similar to today’s square dances, soon evolved into more elaborate and unique forms of expression. Examples of three types of Renaissance dances include the pavanne, galliard, and jig. The pavanne is a more solemn stately dance in a duple meter (in twos). Its participants dance and move around with prearranged stopping and starting places with the music. Pavannes are more formal and used in such settings. The galliard is usually paired with a pavanne. The galliard is in triple meter (in threes) and provides an alternative to the rhythms of the pavanne. The jig is a folk dance in an animated meter (compound time and quick tempo), originally developed in the 1500s in England. The instrumental jig music became popular and was regularly performed in Elizabethan theatres after the main play.

Focus Composition: Kemp’s Jig

William Kemp (c. 1560-c. 1603)—actor, song and dance performer, and comedian—is immortalized for having created comic roles in Shakespeare. He won a bet that he could dance from London to Norwich (80 miles), which took him nine days. A jig was written to celebrate the event and later is known as Kemp’s Jig. This jig started a unique phrasing/cadence system that carried well past the Renaissance period.

See this informative Renaissance Music Timeline.