Instrumental music in the Renaissance can be divided into several general types. Naturally, many of these types overlap or can be further subdivided. Listed below are several of the most common.
Be sure to visit the Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments on the website of Iowa State University's Musica Antiqua for descriptions, pictures, and sound examples of Medieval and Renaissance instruments.
The immense popularity of social dancing in the sixteenth century is reflected in the vast amount of music for the popular dance forms of the day. Dance pieces served varying purposes:
Dances were often paired: one in a relatively slow duple meter with another in a faster triple meter, as in the pavane and galliard in Example 12.1 in A History of Western Music (HWM), 7th ed., p. 273.
Among the prominent types of dances are these:
Examples of the first two types are in NAWM 59: Pierre Attaingnant
(editor and printer), Dances from
Danseries a 4 Parties, Second Livre (published 1547)
Instrumental ensembles often played chansons, Lieder, madrigals, and even motets and mass movements. These served purposes similar to stylized dances: for the entertainment of listeners or of the players themselves. Sometimes vocal pieces appear in manuscript without their texts, suggesting instrumental performance. There are also pieces that resemble vocal music but do not have a text in any manuscript, suggesting that they were conceived for instruments.
The second edition of NAWM had an example of a chanson by Ockeghem that was performed by instruments.
The second edition of NAWM also had a chanson that appeared in manuscript without a text and was presumably written for instruments. It uses the tune L'homme armé (also used in several well known masses).
Arrangements of vocal music (sacred or secular) for solo instrument (usually lute, vihuela, or keyboard) were typically notated in tablature, and therefore known as intabulations. These were often highly ornamented with added figuration.
NAWM 60a is an intabulation of Josquin des Prez's Mille regretz for vihuela by Luis de Narváez (fl. 1526-1549).
Instrumental composers wrote hundreds of settings of existing melodies, as vocal composers had done for centuries. There are several prominent types.
Often all the pieces for organ necessary for performance during Mass were gathered together in an organ mass. The Kyrie of Girolamo Cavazzoni's organ mass Missa Apostolorum offers an example, alternating between segments of the Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor (see NAWM 3b) set for organ and segments performed in plainchant by the choir.
The second edition of NAWM had an example of an In nomine by Christopher Tye (ca. 1500-ca. 1572)
Beginning in the sixteenth century, composers wrote many sets of variations for instruments. These can be divided into three basic types.
The Spanish tune Guárdame las vacas has the same bass pattern as the romanesca, a very common source for Italian composers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. One of the first to compose variations on repeating bass patterns was Luiz de Narváez.
Related to the last of these is the English manner of writing out the repetitions of pavanes and galliards (which were both in AABBCC form) as variations.
These types are abstract instrumental music, often involving imitation.
The second edition of NAWM had an example of an early fantasia.
The second edition of NAWM had an example of a fantasia from the early seventeenth century, based on a partly chromatic subject.
Among the best known ensemble canzonas are those of Giovanni Gabrieli.
Soloists used introductory pieces to test the tuning of an instrument, to introduce a song or other vocal piece, or to demonstrate their skill. Among the most common types are these:
Last updated: 24 October 2005
URL: http://www.music.indiana.edu/som/courses/m401/RenInstrum.html
This page was created by Patrick Warfield and James
Rodgers
and is maintained by Patrick Warfield and J. Peter Burkholder
Comments: pwarfiel@indiana.edu
or burkhold@indiana.edu
Copyright © 1997 by J. Peter Burkholder and Patrick Warfield