Transition to Renaissance Music

Article  -  The Transition to Renaissance Music


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.  

1304 - 1374  -  Petrarch - The "father of Renaissance humanism" 

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.

1387 - 1400  -   Geoffrey Chaucer writes The Canterbury Tales 



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.  

In the Baroque era, composers developed chord progressions from the triads.  They are the foundation of most of our music today.  In chord progressions, certain chords "pull" (or resolve) to the next chord.  The I-IV-V chord progression (the C chord, F chord, and G chord in the key of C) is the most popular.   

During the Hundred Years' War, Dunstaple takes the third harmony to France.  He influenced 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.

Countenance Angloise 

The Contenance angloise, or English manner, is a distinctive style of polyphony developed in fifteenth-century England which uses full, rich harmonies based on the third and sixth.   It was highly influential in the fashionable Burgundian court of Philip the Good, and on European music of the era.   Its leading proponent was John Dunstaple, followed by Walter Frye and John Hothby.