Renaissance Music (15th and 16th Centuries) Study Guide

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering Renaissance music terms, sacred genres of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, secular national styles, and instrumental idioms.

Carol

A dance-like piece popular in the 1400s that consisted of stanzas (verses) and refrains (burdens), with texts written in Latin, Middle English, or a mix of both.

Points of Imitation

A passage in a polyphonic work in which two or more parts enter at different times imitating one another with the same melody.

Paired Duets

A polyphonic scoring technique featuring quickly alternating two-voice duets, such as a soprano/tenor pair followed by an alto/bass pair.

English Discant

A 3-voice passage composed in a manner where the voices move primarily in parallel first-inversion chords.

Cyclic Mass

A musical setting of the five movements of the Catholic Mass Ordinary unified musically as a single coherent piece rather than treated as five separate pieces.

Cantus Firmus Mass

A cyclic mass setting where the composer places a borrowed chant melody or secular tune into the tenor as a fixed song ("cantus firmus") without altering notes, while other voices move polyphonically around it.

Rush to the Cadence

A compositional technique where the musical texture intensifies and rhythmic note values shorten (e.g., shifting to eighth or sixteenth notes) as the music approaches a cadence point.

Tylman Susato

A prominent printer of Renaissance dance music who was active primarily in Antwerp.

Tablature

Instrument-specific musical notation instructing finger placement (comparable to modern guitar tabs), such as Spanish, French lute, or German keyboard tablature.

Vihuela

A very popular Spanish Renaissance plucked string instrument shaped like a guitar but tuned and played like a lute.

Virginal

A small Renaissance harpsichord variant featuring strings running perpendicular to the keyboard.

Ricercar

An abstract Renaissance instrumental composition written in the polyphonic style of a motet, utilizing points of imitation and overlapping phrases.

Canzona

An instrumental composition written in the style of a Parisian chanson, featuring chordal textures, sectional structure alternating homophony and polyphony, and an opening long-short-short-long rhythm.

Mannerism

A musical style from roughly 1580 to 1620 characterized by extreme harmonic experimentation, chromaticism, rests interrupting polyphonic flow, and exaggerated text painting to convey tension, instability, and emotional intensity.

Polychoral (Concertato) Style

A sacred or instrumental piece scored for two or more distinct choirs, usually performed with 1 to 4 singers per vocal line.

Frottola

A lighthearted Italian secular vocal setting for 3 to 4 voices with the principal melody in the top voice, chordal syllabic text-setting, and dance rhythms with hemiola patterns, popularized by composers such as Marchetto Cara.

Council of Trent (Musical Resolutions)

Counter-Reformation decrees ordering music to feature simple polyphony with intelligible words, improved singing, discouragement of instruments other than the organ, elimination of secular-based masses/motets, and removal of all tropes and all but four sequences.

15th-Century International Style

A musical idiom (1440–1520) fostered at the Burgundian court that synthesized French forms, Italian lyricism, and English harmonies; characterized by equal-voiced polyphony, smooth gently curving melodies, and sweet thirds and sixths.

Chorale

A monophonic sacred tune set to German text designed for congregational singing within the Lutheran church.

Metrical Psalm

A Calvinist strophic, rhymed translation of biblical psalms rearranged into the vernacular language, sung so that music does not detract from textual clarity.

Anthem

The English-language Anglican equivalent of the Latin motet, categorized as either a "full anthem" (choral and contrapuntal) or a "verse anthem" (soloist alternating with chorus and organ).

Service (Anglican)

The Anglican musical setting equivalent to the Catholic Mass Ordinary, divided into the "Great Service" (elaborate, melismatic settings) and "Short Service" (simpler, syllabic, unaccompanied choral settings).

Parisian Chanson

A 16th-century French secular song style for 2 to 5 voices (typically 4) characterized by chordal textures, simple syllabic rhythms, repetition of words and notes, and an opening long-short-short-long rhythmic gesture; representative composer is Claudin de Sermisy.

16th-Century Madrigal

A through-composed secular vocal form setting 1 or 2 stanzas for 4 to 7 soloists, designed to convey the poetic emotions through bold harmonies and word painting; composers include Cipriano de Rore and Carlo Gesualdo.

Word Painting (Madrigalism)

A technique in vocal music where the musical setting directly depicts or reflects the literal meaning or emotional affect of specific words in the text.

Ballett

A lighthearted English vocal genre modeled on the Italian madrigal, characterized by dance-like rhythms, chordal textures, and nonsense "fa-la" refrains; representative composer is Thomas Morley.

Lute Ayre

An English secular song composed for a solo vocal line with lute accompaniment, championed by composer John Dowland.

Villancico

A Spanish secular strophic song form related to the virelai and frottola, featuring chordal textures, melody in the top voice, hemiola dance rhythms, and refrains; representative composer is Juan del Encina.

Intabulation

An instrumental arrangement of an existing polyphonic vocal piece transcribed into tablature for lute or keyboard, typically embellished with idiomatic ornamentation.

Consort Song

An English vocal composition that emerged during the reign of Henry VIII, featuring a solo voice accompanied by a consort of viols (a bowed string ensemble).

Tenorlied

A popular secular German polyphonic song genre centered around a borrowed melody in the tenor, prominent during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.