Your dose of late medieval/early Renaissance music

from Elemental Forums

 

I'm reviewing a compilation of Millenarium discs at the moment, listening in the background while checking the forums.  It seemed reasonable to mix the two.  This is some of the kind of thing people listened to at courts and upper class gatherings in France and the Italian States in the early 14th century ACE.  The slow piece is followed by one that's more of a dance.  Both are heavily influenced by MidEastern music, which dropped like a bombshell on European culture during the Crusades.  (As did MidEastern poetry, and science.)

 

It's not a lot like the period's music in movies, but it's great in its own way.  And I can't help hoping someday, someone will use very good early music performers to  create the accompaniment in one of those epical "Sir Lancelot meets Spartacus meets Rodan" spectacles. :thumbsup:

30,810 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Really interesting. Ever listen to Rick Wakeman's "King Arthur" or "Wives of Henry the VIII"?

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Odd... you'd think music would have been part of the heritage from the Greeks and Roman civilizations I wonder how that was lost... very interesting.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sinperium, reply 1
Really interesting. Ever listen to Rick Wakeman's "King Arthur" or "Wives of Henry the VIII"?

 

Yeah.  Not my kind of thing, but interesting. :)

 

Odd... you'd think music would have been part of the heritage from the Greeks and Roman civilizations I wonder how that was lost... very interesting.

 

Attic Greece and Rome were largely oral cultures, despite having an upper class that was heavily involved in writing.  Most of the literature is lost--for instance, Sophocles wrote 123 plays, of which only 7 exist in complete form.  Music was both a folk practice taught directly from master to pupil, or part of plays, where performers learned by practice.  Musical notation sufficient to play these works existed as far back as the 7th century BCE, though only a few fragments exist today.  Oddly enough, that notation scheme was later lost to time, and Europe switched as a whole to one that made playing old works almost impossible--melody indicated only by direction of pitch, no rhythmic notation--until the 14th century ACE.

 

I'll put up something else of the period, later.  Hope you liked it.

 

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

 

This is actually late Renaissance--Tudor Church music, written by Thomas Tallis.  Supposedly on a bet from a highly placed noble who wanted to see if anybody could outdo a visiting Italian diplomat-composer, who had written music for a 24-part (not voice, but part) choir.  Tallis responded with a 40-voice motet (sacred work not meant to use the text of what's called the Ordinary of the Mass).  Once the thing gets going it seems to float in space, thanks to endless delayed repetition (okay, there's a musical term for it, but I'm not going to go into that) and static harmonies that suddenly move in unexpected directions.  Even after the period's music felt into disuse, and before its mid-20th century revival, Spem in alium retained a hold on British choirs.

 

You don't need to understand the text.  Just listen to the thing.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Really like the last one here.

Rick Wakeman does not compare--but I like his effort (though I doubt most can handle that much synth nowadays).

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

 

This song is by Guillaume Dufay, and has been dated on strong evidence to 1426, when Dufay left a post with the Laon Cathedral choir in France, to serve in the Italian States, in the Bologna Cathedral.  Its melody is expressive of sadness in a way that's much closer to contemporary folk tradition, than the religious one of the period.  Dufay wrote excellently in both, and was among the most celebrated composers of his age.  In his last years, he was considered literally the finest in Europe, though this was a Europe where written music was written by hand, and moved between groups of scholars and interested parties who discussed it in lengthy letters.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

http://tindeck.com/listen/wcmz

 

This is one of my personal favorites.  It dates from around 1470-1500, so fairly late along in the Renaissance, and was part of a compilation of music from the Burgundy region of what is now France.  Lots of musical experimentation going on at that court at the time, with all sorts of strange complexities, unusual time signatures, and curious harmonies.  This piece deliberately goes in the opposite direction, and could come right out of the folk music countryside, today.  It's anonymous, like much of the very little music surviving from that period.