From Folk Song to Polyphony
The songs and dances of the people were an inexhaustible source from which secular music drew its moods and themes, and some masses also arose from simple tunes such as "Farewell, My Loves." French songs began with the ballads of troubadours and trouveres and ended in the intricate polyphonic songs of Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez.
Machaut (about 1300-1377) was the standard-bearer of the "new music" that Philippe de Vitry had launched in 1325. Besides the triple meter of the "old music," which the church had accepted, this new style also used duple meter. Machaut was a poet, a scholar, a musician and a canon of Reims cathedral, and perhaps also a man of ardent temperament, since some of his love songs have not lost their warmth. He was skilled in nearly a dozen forms, such as the ballade, rondeau, virelai, motet and mass; one of the oldest polyphonic masses composed by a single man is attributed to him. Though himself a servant of the church, he took part in the new movement to free polyphonic music from church control, and he worked hard to loosen music from the bonds of the traditional motet and great mass and turn it into a freer, more flexible form of public song.
The English Contribution
The English of those days were lovers of music. Although they could not match the Italians in sweet melody (who can?) or compete with the Flemings in polyphony, their songs were sometimes as tender and lively as the deepest French ones. English singers drew special notice and praise at the Council of Constance, and in those same years Henry V, hero of Agincourt, composed a mass of which the "Gloria" and "Sanctus" survive. The works of John Dunstable (about 1370-1453) were sung from Scotland to Rome, and they helped create the Flemish school of music.
The Flemish School
Just as Flanders was the creator and leader of oil painting in the fifteenth century, one of the richest periods of music also grew in that environment of art-loving nobles and wealthy townsmen. Johannes Verwere (probably the theorist Tinctoris) wrote in 1490: "Today, besides a great number of famous singers, we have produced an almost countless host of composers whose works have reached the highest level of beauty of sound, and whenever I hear or look at these compositions I am filled with delight." People of the age probably ranked composers such as Dufay, Ockeghem and Josquin with painters of the standing of Jan van Eyck, Claus Sluter and Rogier van der Weyden. In Flemish polyphony western Europe lived through the last phase of the Gothic spirit in art, a spirit born of firm religious faith and gentle worldly cheer, producing forms with a solid base and sturdy structure, though limited in imaginative range and outward ornament.
Even Italy, so unsympathetic to Gothic art, joined western Europe in accepting the supremacy of Flemish music and called Flemish masters to lead church choirs or play in princely courts. The emperor Maximilian I, who had greatly enjoyed the music of Brussels, formed a Flemish-style choir for himself in Vienna. Charles V took Flemish musicians to Spain; Archduke Ferdinand hired a group of them in Austria; Christian II invited others to Denmark. Cavalo of Venice said, "The wellspring of music is in the Low Countries." Professional music, following this superiority, freed itself from the narrow nationalism of the age and spread everywhere.
Dufay and Ockeghem
Guillaume Dufay held the leadership in the field. Born in Hainaut (about 1399), trained at Cambrai cathedral as a choirboy, he was summoned to Rome to sing in the Sistine chapel, but after a time returned to Cambrai and by his efforts made its choir world-famous, so that masses he composed were performed at every music center of Latin Christendom. Some of Dufay's surviving works sound very slow and heavy to ears used to the speed and lightness of modern life, but it must be said fairly that they suited the splendid church services of the time and the grand choir of the papal court. A work that fits the modern taste better is the song Le jour s'endort ("The day goes to sleep"), written in polyphonic style with a gentle and sorrowful expression. We may imagine choirs in robes singing such a piece in the halls of the Gothic churches of Cambrai, Ypres, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Dijon, and realize that the architecture, painting, dress, music and manners of that rich, warm age together made a balanced artistic whole, all springing from one inner source of faith.
Dufay's methods were developed by men who may have been the most influential teachers of music in any age, and spread across Europe. Johannes Ockeghem was born in Flanders (about 1430) and spent most of his life at the French court promoting and teaching music. He loved writing canons. A canon is a form in which the melody and words sung by the first voice are repeated after a few beats by a second voice, then a third, and so on, producing a flowing tide of counterpoint whose intricacy is a real test of the singer's skill and the composer's invention. Composers from all countries obedient to the Roman church hastened to him to learn his art and carry it home. As a later historian wrote (in 1833), his pupils carried his skill in canon and in counterpoint across all European countries, and he must rightly be regarded as the founder of all schools of music from his time to the present. When he died (1495), European composers wrote motets in his memory, and Erasmus wrote a lament for him.
Josquin des Prez
His pupils became the leaders of the next generation. Josquin des Prez, who came from Hainaut to Paris, spent years absorbing Ockeghem's teaching, then became choirmaster in Florence, Milan and Ferrara. He composed a setting of Psalm 51 (the book says 50) that quickly became famous across western Europe and dedicated it to Ercole I, Duke of Ferrara. After six years singing in the Sistine chapel he returned to Paris (1494) and was appointed to the chapel of Louis XII. One of his finest works is a lament, Deploration, on the death of Ockeghem, composed for his late master. For a time Josquin, following his teacher, wrote masses and motets in canon style, piling the voices on one another with careful calculation of harmony and the sequence of sounds and raising a magnificent structure from them. When his skill reached its height and his supremacy in the art was beyond question, he tired of difficult forms and wrote motets, sacred hymns and secular songs in a simpler style. In these works his music, on a simpler harmonic base, served the words and clarified their meaning, avoiding any complication or needless drawing out of syllables. When teacher and pupil died, it became the common custom to call Ockeghem the Donatello, and Josquin the Michelangelo, of the world of music.
Court Music in France
The French court cultivated music as the fairest flower of wealth and power. A fine tapestry from about 1500, now in the Gobelins museum in Paris, shows four women, three youths and a bald monk gathered in a garden around a fountain: one of the boys plays the lute, a girl the viol, and another dignified woman a portable organ. French poets wrote their lyrics to be sung, and one of the court academies had no other task than to create harmony and unity between poetry and music. Even today either of the two, without the other, seems incomplete. Clement Janequin, a pupil of Josquin, was skilled in descriptive songs, and his "lark song" (1521, as the book dates it) is still hummed on several continents.
Spain and the Lute Song
Spanish music reflected the faith and gallantry of its people. Drawing on Arab, Italian, Provencal, French and Flemish sources, it was wide enough to reach on one side the mournful Morisco songs of the monophonic kind and on the other to include magnificent polyphonic masses in the Flemish style. One of the greatest composers of the sixteenth century in Europe was the Spaniard Cristobal de Morales, who brought polyphonic music in his country to perfection and passed his art to his worthy pupil Tomas Luis de Victoria. In another direction, the Arab heritage of Spanish music produced veins well suited to the lute. Luis de Milan and Miguel de Fuenllana composed and played pieces for the vihuela that matched German folk songs in power and breadth.
Heinrich Isaac
The conquest of Italy by Flemish musicians continued until the rise of Palestrina. Heinrich Isaac, after learning counterpoint thoroughly from Flemish masters, was invited to Florence by Lorenzo de' Medici to teach his children. He stayed fourteen years and composed music for Lorenzo's songs. The French invasion of Italy made him flee to Innsbruck and enter the service of Maximilian I; there, with other musicians, he helped shape German folk songs. In 1502 he returned to Italy to enjoy the pensions fixed for him by the emperor and by his old pupil Pope Leo X. His masses, motets and songs and, above all, his major work, the Choralis Constantinus, with fifty-eight four-part pieces for the Mass through the liturgical year, are ranked among the finest compositions of the age.
Orlando di Lasso
Orlando di Lasso brought the Flemish school to its greatest height, and in his honored career raised the social standing and fame of Renaissance musicians. He too was born in Hainaut, and from his boyhood singing in a church choir he so charmed listeners that, according to the book, he was twice carried off by people who wanted to profit from his gift. At fifteen (1545) his parents entrusted him to Ferdinand Gonzaga to take him to Italy. At twenty-three he became choirmaster of St. John Lateran in Rome. In 1555 he made Antwerp his home and published a collection of his works, the first book of Italian madrigals, secular poems set as polyphony with every refinement of Flemish counterpoint. The same year he published another collection of village songs (Neapolitan style), French songs and four sacred motets, in which his wise swing between religious penitence and worldly delight is clear. Since he dedicated one motet to Cardinal Pole and another to Cardinal Granvelle, representative of Philip II on the Netherlands council of state, we can judge his standing and company in Antwerp. It was probably Granvelle who arranged for the young composer to be hired as choirmaster at the Munich court (1556). Orlando liked the Duchy of Bavaria as much as Italy and stayed in the service of the dukes of Bavaria until death; his Bavarian wife and his Italian name show his equal love for both lands.
This fortunate Mozart of the sixteenth century left twice the 626 works of the Mozart of the eighteenth (as the book states), creating in every musical form of the day and winning fame across Europe in each. His works show that he wrote tender love madrigals with the same ease as light love songs or deep, faith-filled masses. In 1563 he became choirmaster, and set the seven "Penitential Psalms," presenting them to Albert V. The duke praised them highly and employed artists to copy them on parchment, illuminate them and bind them in red leather in two large volumes, which are now among the most precious holdings of the state library in art-loving Munich.
All Europe longed to see this rising star. When he arrived in Paris (1571), Charles IX wished to keep him with a yearly salary of 1,200 livres, but Orlando refused, and instead presented Charles and Catherine de' Medici with a book of his French songs, which Brantome says were among the sweetest tunes Paris had heard. One of the songs praised the French capital as a city that loved justice and peace, exactly a year before the St. Bartholomew massacre. Returning to Munich, he dedicated a collection of Latin motets, Italian madrigals, German folk songs and French songs to the Fugger family. In 1574 he traveled to Rome at Duke Albert's expense, dedicated a book of his masses to Pope Gregory XIII and received in return the "Order of the Golden Spur." Even God, they said, recognized the worth of his work: during the Corpus Christi service of 1584 a violent storm rose and nearly wrecked the procession that was to move through Munich's streets as every year, but when Orlando's motet "Taste and see how gracious the Lord is" was begun by his own choir, the rain stopped and the sun came out from behind the clouds; and since that year that piece has always been sung on the feast day to ensure good weather.
In 1585 Orlando, old and repentant, published his fifth book of madrigals, giving form to spiritual and religious themes, and it is counted among his most moving works. Five years later his mind failed; he no longer recognized his wife and spoke of nothing but death, the Last Judgment and a raise in pay. At last he received the raise, and died (1594) in triumph and madness.