The Renaissance was a period of expanding knowledge. Alongside a resurgence of interest in Classical learning, new ideas regarding science, religion, and the arts flourished and spread across Europe. Humanism, with its focus on human interests and values, steered prevailing thought toward nature, the individual, and the empirical. Renaissance musicians developed a variety of musical forms, respecting traditional modes of expression even as they expanded upon them. As this book details, the musicians of the period reflected to some degree the rapidly changing world around them.

Western music was influenced by that of the eastern Mediterranean in a number of ways, including the widespread adoption of the diatonic (seven-note) scale, which replaced the prevailing church modes commonly used until then, and the use of metre as a means of dividing compositions into equal portions of time. These are basic structural elements of classical composition.

The Christian Church was a vehicle of both musical evolution and dispersion. While there were many regional styles of chant, or unison songs, sung throughout Europe as part of the traditional Western church mass, Gregorian chant was the standard. Originating in Rome under Pope Gregory I in the late 6th century, this style of unison liturgical music was adopted across Europe over the next several hundred years, and then modified by the addition of melodic lines. This polyphony, which was both simultaneous and contrapuntal, was documented in the work of 11th-century monk and musical theorist Guido d’Arezzo.

Hand-coloured illustration from an early 16th-century edition of Margarita philosophica by German encyclopedist Gregor Reisch. Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images

In the 12th century, the main thrust of musical innovation shifted from Rome to Paris. At such places as Notre-Dame cathedral, music featuring multiple melodies that wove through or played against the plainsong melody was composed for liturgical, and later secular, use. Reflecting on the musical directions of his time, 14th-century French composer Philippe de Vitry wrote about the use of metre and harmony in his work Ars Nova; the label Ars Antiqua (“Ancient Art”) came to apply to the music of the 13th century that had foreshadowed the changes to come.

From roughly the 15th century forward, royal interests shaped the evolution of music in more or less equal proportion to those of the Roman Catholic Church. The crème de la crème of European musicians were drawn to Burgundian courts (in what is now eastern France and portions of the Low Countries), attracted by the wealth of the French aristocracy and the promise of finding work in both the secular and religious realms. Early improvisational forms can be seen in compositions of this time, with melodies centred in the top voices and lower parts played by instruments. Some nobles became traveling musicians themselves, composing and performing songs in courts across France and Italy, calling themselves troubadours. These collections of composers and performers spread innovative ideas, including four-part harmony and chord progression, throughout Europe. Still, liturgical music remained in demand, and it evolved as well.

The secularization of music encouraged the development of new vocal styles. The reinvented madrigals of 16th century Italy evolved into dramatic, five- or even six-part harmonic pieces featuring complex texts and counterpoint (independent melodies that complemented and enriched the standard melody), while simpler songs, called canzonettas and ballettos, emerged as a response to the madrigal’s complexity. The madrigal’s French counterpart was known as the chanson. Composers in Elizabethan England adopted Italian madrigals, as well as ballettos and canzonettas, and made them their own, while also championing the popular ayre that sprang up in both countries. Germany was home to the lied, a secular song performed using straightforward chord progressions. Neither the lied nor the Spanish villancico of the Iberian Peninsula could match the madrigal in its stylistic importance.

Until the 16th century, music had been primarily vocal, with instruments serving primarily to double voices or accompany dancers. By the late 1500s, pieces written specifically for instruments exploded in popularity. They included traditional dance forms, such as the pavane and courante, as well as preludes (particularly for the organ), and fugue-like forms in which instrument voices imitated a melodic line, such as the ricercari and canzoni. No longer relegated to the role of mere accompaniment, instrumentalists began to showcase their own technical skills.

The lute in particular enjoyed mass popularity. Its strings, which varied in number before settling on six in the 16th century, were plucked with the fingers. The sound carried through the sound hole, reverberating in the instrument’s hollow, pear-shaped body. Modified tunings produced a large assortment of variations on the lute.

Keyboard instruments also were favoured during the Renaissance. Among these was the pipe organ—a staple in churches, even to this day. Styles of organs varied by region, resulting in great variations in number of stops (pipes) and manual controls, but chromatic keyboards became standard as early as the 14th century. Also widespread at this time were stringed keyboards, including the clavichord and the harpsichord. The clavichord, designed for smaller venues than were organs, allowed the player to control dynamics solely through keystrokes. This typically rectangular instrument featured a keyboard on the left, and strings to the right, and had a range of three and a half to five octaves. The harpsichord outwardly resembles a modern piano, despite the frequent presence of two or more sets of strings. Unlike the clavichord and piano, which have hammered strings, the harpsichord makes music via strings that are plucked by a mechanism called a jack. Regional variations on the harpsichord were seen beginning in the 16th century. Smaller versions were called spinets, a name that now refers to one type of small upright piano. The virginal is a type of harpsichord in which the single set of strings runs nearly parallel to the keyboard, rather than in the perpendicular arrangement of other harpsichords.

Until the Renaissance, wind instruments had played a relatively limited musical role. With the development of polyphony and the increase in instrumental ensembles came the necessity for a range of instrumental voices. The result of this evolution in composition was a variety of instrument sizes. Renaissance wind instruments included recorders and cornets and such colourfully named devices as the shawm, sackbut, crumhorn, and hoboy (oboe).

The craftsmen who made and refined these instruments were responding to the needs of the composers of the Renaissance. The early composers of the period were pioneers of a rich, layered sound previously unknown. Described as graceful and expressive, compositions from a group of composers of what has become known as the Franco-Flemish school marked a transition from the monophonic chants and diatonic pieces of the Middle Ages. Patronage of these men was provided by the church, nobility, or both at different points in their lives. Thus, nearly all wrote both religious and secular music.

Renaissance composers were an impressive lot. Hailing from various areas of Europe, each contributed to the evolution of musical styles and instrumentation. Some were employed by kings, such as Jean de Ockeghem, composer to three kings of France. Several began their musical careers as performers, such as Josquin de Prez, a singer whose mastery of composition was praised by German theologian and religious reformer Martin Luther. Attached, as they often were, by common service to an aristocrat, many early Renaissance composers often kept company with one another, as well as with poets and painters employed by the same court. The comingling of artistic sensibilities frequently yielded rich results. Regarded as a harmonic innovator, Englishman John Dunstable exerted great influence on composers of the Franco-Flemish school. Binchois used the poetry of Charles, duc d’Orleans, and Christine de Pisan for his texts, and was a contemporary of both the French composer Guillaume Dufay and the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck in the court of Philip the Good.

One might assume that, because of its geographic connection to the papacy in Rome, Italian music of the Renaissance would be predominantly sacred. However, as throughout Western Europe, both religious and secular works were produced by Italian composers of the time. Among those who were known for their madrigals was Jacques Arcadelt, a Flemish composer working in Italy, who set the poetry of the great Renaissance humanist Petrarch to music. The madrigals of Luca Marenzio are prized for their ability to reflect the mood of their texts, employing chromatics and unresolved dissonance to great effect.

Another composer of madrigals, Carlo Gesualdo, had an intriguing personal life that threatened to overshadow his music. A prince who murdered his first wife and her lover, and whose second wife claimed that his lovers performed witchcraft on him, Gesualdo created work that has been described as “unusual and experimental.”

As a choirboy with an exceptionally fine voice, the Flemish composer Orlando di Lasso was “kidnapped” and pressed into service for various choirs on three separate occasions. In adulthood, Lasso worked for several nobles, traveling with them before settling in Germany. While adept at writing secular music in the French, German, and Italian styles, Lasso was particularly noted for his sacred works. His compositions helped earn him the rank of noble, granted by the Emperor Maximilian, and a high pontifical honour from Pope Gregory XIII.

While the likes of Gesualdo and Lasso drew inspiration from the unconventional circumstances of their own lives, another composer of this period, Claudio Monteverdi, mostly left drama at the theatre door, as it were. A composer who occasionally wrote for the dramatic stage, Monteverdi became a master of the operatic score. His attempts to match the music to the emotions being exhibited onstage via tempo and dissonance, as well as his experimentation with musical forms such as the recitative (music free of rhythm that imitates natural speech), shaped the then-burgeoning art of opera. His influence is still felt today.

Patronage was extremely important to Renaissance musicians and composers. Both secular and religious works were often dedicated to the noblemen or church elders whose financing made their completion possible. However, some composers succeeded despite lacking in privilege. Although he held nonmusical positions under two bishops in his native France, Clément Janequin never received patronage from anyone in the church, nor from anyone at court. Despite this lack of support, Janequin published a number of works; he is particularly known for his chansons. Swiss composer Ludwig Senfl endured a period of what essentially amounted to unemployment after the death of his patron, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, but he was able to regain his status several years later.

Religious affiliation also was a crucial element in the lives of many of these men. The division between Catholics and Protestants during the later Renaissance set the stage for a period of great musical productivity in England. The composer Christopher Tye was greatly influential in creating the style of music adopted by the Reformed church, adhering to the dictates of King Edward VI, who decreed that choirs sing in English and use one note per syllable. Upon Tye’s death, Thomas Tallis took up the mantle of leadership through the creation of settings for the new liturgy in the Church of England. The settings were analogous to parts of the Latin mass in the Roman Catholic Church. Tallis’s pupil, William Byrd, was a Catholic, yet he wrote for both churches, as the political climate allowed. Composer and musician John Dowland was convinced that his conversion to Catholicism was responsible for his loss of a post as court lutenist, resulting in years of self-exile from England. Dowland’s time abroad proved useful as he was able to incorporate musical styles and innovations gleaned from across the Continent into his own work, which included 90 pieces for solo lute.

In addition to Dowland, there are plenty of other musicians whose work benefited from the mingling of ideas across countries and regions. Philippe de Monte’s madrigals were influenced by his travels and periods of residence in Italy, England, Spain, and other locations across Europe. Evidence of exposure to other musical cultures can be found as well in the compositions of Hans Leo Hassler, a German composer whose works show Italian characteristics. Innovations made by musicians of the age formed a bridge leading from medieval chants and common songs to the great modern classical composers. It is hard to imagine what modern music would be like without these crucial transitions. Hence, the study of Renaissance musicians and their work is crucial toward gaining a clear understanding of the evolution of Western music.