1.5.4: Secular Music - Entertainment Music of the Renaissance

Music in Renaissance Courts and Towns

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Royalty sought the finest of the composers to employ for entertainment. A single court, or royal family, might 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, traveling 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 solo voices or groups of solo voices.

Focus Composition: Thomas Weelkes, As Vesta Was From Latmos Hill Descending [1601]

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Thomas Weelkes, a church organist and composer, became one of the finest English madrigal composers. Thomas Weelkes’ “As Vesta Was Descending” serves as a good example of word painting with the melodic line following the meaning of the text in performance.

Renaissance Dance Music

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With the rebirth of the Renaissance, came a resurgence of the popularity of dance. This resurgence led to instrumental dance music becoming the most widespread 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 pavane, galliard, and jig.

The pavane 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. Pavanes are more formal and used in such settings.

The galliard is usually paired with a pavane. The galliard is in triple meter (in threes) and provides an alternative to the rhythms of the pavane. The jig is a folk dance or its tune in an animated meter. It was originally developed in the 1500s in England. The instrumental jig was a popular dance number. Jigs were regularly performed in Elizabethan theatres after the main play. William Kemp actor, song and dance performer, and a comedian, is immortalized for having created comic roles in Shakespeare. He accompanied his jig performances with pipe and tabor and snare drum. Kemp’s jig started a unique phrasing/cadence system that carried well past the Renaissance period.