Music of the Renaissance: the voice of a new culture. Music of the High Renaissance Musical Art of the Italian Renaissance

The Italian word Renaissance in the original sounds like "rinascita" (rinascita), it was coined by Giorgio Vasari. For the first time, the term was used by him in the work "Biography" in the meaning of "the flourishing of the arts", to indicate the period when artists in their work freed themselves from Greek-Byzantine and Roman-Latin canonical forms.

To define the cultural movement in Europe from the 14th to the 17th centuries, the term "revival" or "renaissance" (from the Italian verb "rinascere" "to be reborn") was used in the 19th century in the work "History of France" by the French historian Jules Michelet .

A bit about the Renaissance in general

The Renaissance is characterized by the reclamation of classical (meaning Greco-Roman classicism) culture. Many researchers believe that Renaissance ideas have their origins in late 13th century Florence in literature and fine arts, and are associated, in particular, with the works of Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch and the frescoes of Giotto di Bondone.

Moreover, the poets, artists, philosophers of the Renaissance were no less religious than their predecessors.

They sought to reconcile theological practice with the new spirit of scientific research (a philosophy called humanism permeates the entire era). It was a time of revitalization of teachings, scientific achievements, great geographical discoveries. In music, which will become an integral part of religious, civil and court life, cardinal changes have been identified since the 15th century.

Periodization and evolution of Renaissance music

Most music historians believe that the evolution of Renaissance music spans a period of 200 years. Traditionally it is divided into:

• music of the early Renaissance period, from 1400 to 1467;
• music of the middle period of the Renaissance, from 1467 to 1534;
• music of the Late (or High) Renaissance, from 1534 to 1600.

Such periodization, in turn, is associated with the flourishing and dominance of various composer schools in Western Europe. The stylistic characteristics that define the music of the Renaissance are polyphonic texture, subject to the laws of counterpoint and regulated by the modal system of Gregorian chant inherited from the Middle Ages.

The musical culture of the Renaissance is sometimes positioned as the "golden age of choral music". In fact, the horizons of music have been greatly expanded.

If during the Middle Ages composers and musicians worked mainly for the church, then as a result of the religious and secular split that occurred in Western Europe during the Renaissance, music gained several patrons: the Catholic and Protestant churches, royal courts, wealthy aristocrats, a new bourgeois class. All of them became sources of income for composers, including, of course, melotype: the musical culture of the Renaissance is closely connected with new technologies (the invention of movable type printing by Johannes Gutenberg).

Aesthetic features of Renaissance music

Like other arts, music was largely influenced by events that defined the Renaissance as a whole: the growth of humanistic thought, the restoration of the Greco-Roman classical heritage, innovative discoveries. The ancient texts have been revised, again acting as an object for study, and they have also been edited, but only in accordance with the developing sciences.

While all the arts and sciences were considered interconnected in ancient Greek culture, Renaissance humanists separated them, highlighting and studying their individual qualities. Music, in particular, was seen as an expressive art capable of influencing emotions and feelings, something that was unheard of in medieval times.

Efforts to organize knowledge in music included ordering the scale so that relationships between notes and human emotions could be established.

It is also important that the musical culture of the Renaissance is characterized by the concept of humanism. Thanks to him, there was a shift in intellectual emphasis - from the widespread dominance of religious thought to the possibilities and achievements of a secular person. The individual creative genius of man was in a much higher position. This also meant that many composers were recognized.

However, to a greater extent, Renaissance music was still spiritual, as in medieval times, but "humanistic" changes influenced the search for more vivid expressiveness in it - to achieve perfection.

The main music of the early Renaissance period, written for important churches and royal chapels, is polyphonic masses and chants (motets) in Latin. But in the light of religious reformations, new types of sacred music arose, moreover, such grandiose upheavals on the church stage led to the fact that secular music was gaining real strength and could already compete with its "sacred" counterpart.

Composer schools of the Renaissance

At the beginning of the 15th century, the English school of polyphonists, led by John Dunstable, came to the fore. The new English style, based on the use of triads, dictated by musical rhythm (with each vocal line moving together in a "vertical" style) strongly influenced the Burgundian school of composition.

Most important among the composers of the Burgundian school was Guillaume Dufay, whose musical work included chants, masses, secular works characterized by melodic lyricism.

The movement, designated as the Franco-Flemish school, is characterized by the strong development of polyphonic vocal-musical composition, which laid the foundation for modern harmony. Its most famous representatives are the “composer of the three French kings”: Johannes Okeghem and Jacob Obrecht.

The musical culture of the Renaissance in the first half of the 16th century is characterized by the fact that it continues to be dominated by Franco-Flemish composers, among whom the most famous was Josquin Despres, whose style was copied by many composers. Josquin's polyphonic music used canons, pre-existing compositional structures, but seamlessly combined with melodies that emphasized rather than masked poetic lines.

For that era, it was considered quite common that leading composers traveled a lot, worked for various patrons in Italy, Spain, Germany, France. The exchange of musical ideas formed, so to speak, the first international style since Gregorian chant in the 9th century.

Since the second half of the 16th century, Italian composers have been achieving unsurpassed mastery in the art of music. Among the iconic figures is Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Genres of Renaissance music

Spiritual vocal genres are mass and motet. Secular genres - madrigal (in Italy and England), chanson (in France), lead (in Germany).

Despite the fact that the music during the era was predominantly reliant on vocals, more and more instruments are beginning to be used. The performers on the instruments sometimes accompanied the singers, from time to time they replaced some of the voices if there were no singers.

Instruments ranged from large ones, such as organ and harpsichord, viola de gamba, to small ones - harp (later lute), recorder (recorder). Gradually, composers begin to write works only for instruments without vocalists.

Music also strongly influenced court dances, introducing a wide range of instruments to accompany them. The instruments were used in the church, during festive and social events, in theatrical performances, in private homes.

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation

Moscow State Open Pedagogical University

them. M.A. Sholokhova

Department of Aesthetic Education

ABSTRACT

"Music of the Renaissance"

Students of the 5th course

Full-time - correspondence department

Polegaeva Lyubov Pavlovna

Teacher:

Zatsepina Maria Borisovna

Moscow 2005

Renaissance - the era of the heyday of the culture of the countries of Western and Central Europe in the period of transition from the Middle Ages to the new time (XV-XVII centuries). The culture of the Renaissance does not have a narrow class character and often reflects the mood of the broad masses of the people; in musical culture it represents several new influential creative schools. The main ideological core of the entire culture of this period was humanism - a new, unprecedented idea of ​​man as a free and comprehensively developed being, capable of unlimited progress. Man is the main subject of art and literature, the work of the greatest representatives of the Renaissance culture - F. Petrarch and D. Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. Most of the cultural figures of this era were themselves multi-talented people. So, Leonardo da Vinci was not only an outstanding artist, but also a sculptor, scientist, writer, architect, composer; Michelangelo is known not only as a sculptor, but also as a painter, poet, and musician.

The development of the worldview and the whole culture of this period was influenced by the adherence to ancient models. In music, along with new content, new forms and genres are also developing (songs, madrigals, ballads, operas, cantatas, oratorios).

With all the integrity and completeness of the culture of the Renaissance in the main, it is characterized by features of inconsistency associated with the interweaving of elements of the new culture with the old. Religious themes in the art of this period continue not only to exist, but also to develop. At the same time, it is so transformed that the works created on its basis are perceived as genre scenes from the life of noble and ordinary people.

The Italian culture of the Renaissance went through certain stages of development: having arisen at the end of the 14th century, it reached its peak in the middle of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. In the second half of the XVI century. there comes a long feudal reaction, due to the economic and political decline of the country. Humanism is in crisis. However, the decline in art is by no means immediately indicated: for decades, Italian artists and poets, sculptors and architects created works of the highest artistic value, the development of ties between various creative schools, the exchange of experience between musicians moving from country to country, working in different chapels, becomes a sign time and allows us to talk about trends common to the entire era.

The Renaissance is one of the most brilliant pages in the history of European musical culture. The constellation of the great names of Josquin, Obrecht, Palestrina, O. Lasso, Gesualdo, who opened new horizons for musical creativity in the means of expression, the richness of polyphony, the scale of forms; flourishing and qualitative renewal of traditional genres - motets, masses; the assertion of new imagery, new intonations in the field of polyphonic song compositions, the rapid development of instrumental music, which has come to the fore after almost five centuries of subordination: other forms of music-making, the growth of professionalism in all areas of musical creativity: a change in views on the role and possibilities of musical art, the formation of new criteria of beauty: humanism as a really emerging trend in all areas of art - all this is connected with our ideas about the Renaissance. The artistic culture of the Renaissance is a personal beginning based on science. The unusually complex skill of the polyphonists of the 15th-16th centuries, their virtuoso technique coexisted with the bright art of everyday dances, the sophistication of secular genres. Lyrical-dramaticism is gaining more and more expression in his works. In addition, they more clearly manifest the personality of the author, the creative individuality of the artist (this is typical not only for musical art), which allows us to speak of humanization as the leading principle of Renaissance art. At the same time, church music, represented by such large genres as the mass and the motet, to a certain extent continues the “Gothic” line in the art of the Renaissance, aimed primarily at recreating the already existing canon and through this, at the glorification of the Divine.

Works of almost all major genres, both secular and spiritual, are built on the basis of some previously known musical material. It could be a monophonic source in motets and various secular genres, instrumental adaptations; it could be two voices borrowed from a three-voice composition and included in a new work of the same or another genre, and, finally, a complete three- or four-voice (motet, madrigal, playing the role of a kind of preliminary “model” of a work of a larger form (mass).

The primary source is equally a popular, widely known tune (choral or secular song) and any author's composition (or voices from it), processed by other composers and, accordingly, endowed with different sound features, a different artistic idea.

In the motet genre, for example, there are almost no works that do not have any original original. Most of the masses of the composers of the 15th-16th centuries also have primary sources: for example, in Palistrina, out of a total of over a hundred masses, we find only six written on a basis free from borrowings. O. Lasso did not write a single mass (out of 58) on the author's material.

At the same time, one can notice that the circle of primary sources on the material of which the authors rely is quite clearly indicated. G. Dufay, I. Okegem, J. Obrecht, Palestrina, O. Lasso and others seem to compete with each other, again and again referring to the same melodies, drawing from them every time, new artistic impulses for their works, rethinking tunes as initial intonational prototypes for polyphonic forms.

When performing the work, a technique was used - polyphony. Polyphony is polyphony in which all voices are equal. All voices repeat the same melody, but at different times, like an echo. This technique is called imitation polyphony.

By the 15th century, the so-called polyphony of “strict writing” was taking shape, the rules (norms of voice leading, shaping, etc.) of which were fixed in the theoretical treatises of that time and were an immutable law for the creation of church music.

Another connection, when the performers uttered different melodies and different texts at the same time, is called contrast polyphony. In general, the "strict" style necessarily implies polyphony of one of two types: imitation or contrast. It was precisely the imitation and contrasting polyphony that made it possible to compose polyphonic motets and masses for church services.

A motet is a small choral song that was usually composed to some popular melody, most often to one of the old church tunes (“Gregorian chants” and other canonical sources, as well as folk music).

With the beginning of the 15th century, in the musical culture of a number of European countries, the features inherent in the Renaissance era are becoming more and more distinct. Prominent among the early polyphonists of the Netherlandish Renaissance, Guillaume Dufay (Dufay) was born in Flanders around 1400. His works, in fact, are more than half a century of the history of the Dutch school of music, which took shape in the second quarter of the 15th century.

Dufay led several chapels, including the papal chapel in Rome, worked in Florence and Bologna, and spent the last years of his life in his native Cambrai. Dufay's heritage is rich and plentiful: it includes about 80 songs (chamber genres - vireles, ballads, rondo), about 30 motets (both spiritual content and secular, "song"), 9 full masses and their separate parts.

An excellent melodist, who achieved lyrical warmth and expression of melos, rare in the era of strict style, he willingly turned to folk melodies, subjecting them to the most skillful processing. Dufay brings a lot of new things to the mass: he expands the composition of the whole more widely, uses the contrasts of the choral sound more freely. One of his best compositions are the masses "Pale Face", "Armed Man", which use borrowed melodies of the same name of song origin. These songs in various versions form a broadly extended intonation-thematic basis that holds together the unity of large choral cycles. In the polyphonic elaboration of the remarkable counterpoint player, they reveal the previously unknown beauty and expressive possibilities hidden in their depths. Dufay's melody harmoniously combines the tart freshness of the Dutch song with its softening Italian melodiousness and French grace. Its imitative polyphony is devoid of artificiality and heaps. Sometimes the sparseness becomes excessive, voids appear. This affects not only the youth of art, which has not yet found the ideal balance of structure, but also the desire characteristic of the Cumbrian master to achieve an artistic and expressive result with the most modest means.

The work of Dufay's younger contemporaries, Johannes Okeghem and Jakob Obrecht, is already attributed to the so-called second Netherlandish school. Both composers are major figures of their time, who determined the development of Dutch polyphony in the second half of the 15th century.

Johannes Okegem (1425 - 1497) worked most of his life at the chapel of the French kings. In the face of Okeghem, in front of Europe, fascinated by the soft, melodious song lyricism of Dufay, the naive meek and archaically bright euphony of his masses and motets, a completely different artist appeared - a “rationalist with a passionless eye” and a sophisticated and technical pen, sometimes avoiding lyricism and striving to capture as soon as possible in music there are certain extremely general laws of objective existence. He discovered an amazing mastery of the development of melodic lines in polyphonic ensembles. Some Gothic features are inherent in his music: figurativeness, non-individual nature of expressiveness, etc. He created 11 complete masses (and a number of their parts), including the theme "Armed Man", 13 motets and 22 songs. It is the large polyphonic genres that are in the first place for him. Some of Okeghem's songs gained popularity among contemporaries and repeatedly served as the primary basis for polyphonic arrangements in larger forms.

Okeghem's creative example as the greatest master and pure polyphonist was of great importance for his contemporaries and followers: his uncompromising focus on the special problems of polyphony inspired respect, if not admiration, it gave rise to a legend and surrounded his name with a halo.

Among those who connected the 15th century with the next, not only chronologically, but also in terms of the essence of creative development, the first place, no doubt, belongs to Jacob Obrecht. He was born in 1450 in Bergen op Zoom. Obrecht worked in the chapels of Antwerp, Cambrai, Bruges and others, and also served in Italy.

Obrecht's creative heritage includes 25 masses, about 20 motets, 30 polyphonic songs. From his predecessors and older contemporaries, he inherited a highly developed, even virtuoso polyphonic technique, imitation-canonical methods of polyphony. In Obrecht's music, which is entirely polyphonic, we sometimes hear a special strength of at least non-personal emotions, boldness of contrasts in large and small limits, quite “earthly”, almost everyday connections in the nature of sounds and particulars of shaping. His worldview ceases to be gothic. He moves towards Josquin Despres, a true representative of the Renaissance in the art of music.

Obrecht's style is characterized by individual features, including a departure from Gothic detachment, causing opposition, the strength of emotions, and connection with everyday genres.

The first third of the 16th century in Italy is the period of the High Renaissance, a time of creative upsurge and unprecedented perfection, embodied in the great works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo. A certain social stratum is being formed, by whose forces theatrical performances and musical holidays are arranged. The activities of various academies of arts are developing.

A little later, a period of high prosperity begins in the art of music, not only in Italy, but also in Germany, France and other countries. The invention of musical notation is of great importance for the dissemination of musical works.

The traditions of the polyphonic school remain strong as before (in particular, the reliance on the sample has the same meaning), but the attitude to the choice of topics is changing, the emotional and figurative richness of the works is increasing, the personal, authorial principle is intensifying. All these features are already evident in the work of the Italian composer Josquin Despres, who was born around 1450 in Burgundy and was one of the greatest composers of the Dutch school of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Gifted with a beautiful voice and hearing, from adolescence he served as a chorister in church choirs in his homeland and in other countries. This early and close contact with high choral art, the active and practical assimilation of the great artistic treasures of cult music largely determined the direction in which the individuality of the future master of genius, his style and genre interests developed at that time.

In his younger years, Despres studied the art of composition with I. Okeghem, from whom he also improved in playing various musical instruments.

Later, Josquin Despres tried his hand at all the musical genres that existed at that time, creating psalms, motets, masses, music on the Passion of the Lord, compositions in honor of St. Mary and secular songs.

The first thing that catches the eye in Despres' works is the striking contrapuntal technique, which makes it possible to consider the author as a real counterpoint virtuoso. However, despite the complete possession of the material, Despres wrote very slowly, very critically examining his works. During the trial performance of compositions, he made a lot of changes to them, trying to achieve an impeccable euphony, which he never sacrificed to counterpoint plexuses.

Using only polyphonic forms, the composer in some cases gives the upper voice an unusually beautiful flowing melody, thanks to which his work is distinguished not only by euphony, but also by melody.

Not wanting to go beyond strict counterpoint, Despres, in order to mitigate dissonances, prepares them, as it were, using a dissonant note in the previous consonance in the form of a consonance. Very successfully, Despres also uses dissonances as a means to enhance musical expression.

It should be noted that J. Despres can rightfully be considered not only a talented counterpoint player and a sensitive musician, but also an excellent artist, able to convey in his works the most subtle shades of feelings and various moods.

Josquin was technically and aesthetically superior to the Italian and French polyphonists of the 15th century. That is why, in the purely musical sphere, he influenced them much more than he was influenced by them. Until his death, Despres led the best chapels in Rome, Florence, and Paris. He has always been equally devoted to his work, contributing to the dissemination and recognition of music. He remained a Dutchman, "a master from Condé." And no matter how brilliant were the foreign achievements and honors, even during the life rendered to the “master of music” (as his contemporaries called him), he, obeying the irresistible “call of the earth”, already in his declining years again returned to the banks of the Scheldt and modestly ended his life as a canon .

In Italy, during the High Renaissance, secular genres flourished. Vocal genres develop in two main directions - one of them is close to everyday song and dance (frotoli, villanelle, etc.), while the other is associated with the polyphonic tradition (madrigal).

Madrigal as a special musical and poetic form provided extraordinary opportunities for the manifestation of the composer's individuality. The main content of his lyrics, genre scenes. Stage music flourished in the Venetian school (an attempt to revive ancient tragedy). Instrumental forms gained independence (pieces for lute, vihuela, organ and other instruments).

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Tikhonova A. I. Renaissance and Baroque: A book for reading - M .: LLC Publishing House ROSMEN - PRESS, 2003.- 109 p.

Chapter 1 Features of musical culture and art of the Renaissance

1.1 Philosophical and aesthetic features of the culture of the Renaissance

The Renaissance, or Renaissance (fr. renaissance), is a turning point in the history of European peoples, a time of great discoveries. The Renaissance marks the beginning of a new stage in the history of world culture. This stage, as noted by F. Engels, was the greatest progressive upheaval of all experienced by mankind up to that time. And, indeed, the Renaissance brought with it significant changes in various areas of the economy, science, culture, opened a new way of understanding the world and determined the place of man in it.

In Italy, new trends appeared already at the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries, in other European countries - in the XV-XVI centuries. This time is characterized by: the transition from feudalism to capitalism, geographical discoveries, trade, personal enterprise, the liberation of man from class restrictions. And also in the Renaissance, modern science, especially natural science, is born. Suffice it to recall the brilliant scientific conjectures of Leonardo da Vinci, the foundation of Francis Bacon, the astronomical theories of Copernicus, the geographical discoveries of Columbus and Magellan.

Undoubtedly, all this could not but affect the nature of the worldview. The Renaissance is a revolution, first of all, in the system of values, in the assessment of everything that exists and in relation to it. There is a conviction that a person is the highest value, the philosophy of humanism is born. Humanism puts forward a completely new interpretation of aesthetic categories, which has grown on the basis of a new understanding of the world.

One of the central categories was the concept of "harmony". The aesthetics of the Renaissance develops a different idea of ​​harmony, based on a new understanding of nature, being and man. If the Middle Ages saw in harmony a simple imprint of the ideal, creative principle, divine beauty, then in the aesthetic consciousness of the Renaissance, harmony appears, first of all, as the development of the creative potentials of nature itself, as a dialectical unity of the bodily and spiritual, ideal and material.

Humanists searched for the ideal of a harmonious person in antiquity, and ancient Greek and Roman art served as a model for their artistic creativity. However, speaking about the aesthetics of the Renaissance, it is necessary to note the fact that, despite its ancient support, it still differed from it. Renaissance aesthetics preaches the imitation of nature no worse than the ancient one, but peering into these revivalist theories of imitation, one can also notice that in the foreground it is not so much nature as the artist, his personality, his feelings. First, the artist, on the basis of his own aesthetic taste, selects certain processes of nature, and only then subjects them to artistic processing. The theoreticians of the Renaissance can trace the following comparison: the artist must create as God created the world, and even more perfect than that.

Thus, the Renaissance, using the lessons of antiquity, introduced innovations. He did not bring back to life all ancient genres, but only those that were in tune with the aspirations of his time and culture. The Renaissance combined a new reading of antiquity with a new reading of Christianity. The Renaissance brought these two fundamental principles of European culture closer together.

God has not determined man's place in the hierarchy, says Pico in his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man: you had of your own accord, according to your will and your decision. The image of other creations is determined within the limits of the laws we have established. But you, not constrained by any limits, will determine your image according to your decision, in the power of which I leave you. Here, the Italian thinker puts a person at the center of the world, this is a person who does not have his own special nature, he must form it himself, like everything that surrounds it.

So, the main thing in the Renaissance is the promotion and approval of the human personality in culture and society, which results in various forms of revivalist anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism brought to the fore not just a person, but a person as an active, active principle. As a result of all this affirmation of a creative, active material principle, a new image of a person gradually began to emerge, a new type of him - “homo faber” - “man-creator”, “man-creator”. It is in it that the formation of the foundations of the new European sense of personality takes place - an autonomous individualistic personality, conscious of its own value, active and in need of freedom. From this moment on, the human personality, and not the world, not the whole, for the first time becomes the starting point for the formation of a system for perceiving the world.

With particular brightness, the signs of a new worldview appeared and were then established in artistic creativity, in the progressive movement of various arts, for which the “revolution of minds” that the Renaissance produced turned out to be extremely important.

In the Renaissance, art played an exceptional role in culture and largely determined the face of the era. There is no doubt that humanism in its "revivalist" understanding poured tremendous fresh energy into the art of its time, inspired artists to search for new themes, and largely determined the nature of the images and the content of their works. Medieval culture was replaced by a new, secular, humanistic culture free from church dogma and scholasticism.

The art of the Renaissance is characterized by the assertion of the principles of realism and humanism in the literature, theater, and fine arts. The art of the Renaissance is, first of all, a secular art that arose on the basis of humanism, which displaces religious ideas and arouses interest in real life, reveals the individual identity of the individual and reveals the socially typical and characteristic qualities of a person.

All major art forms - painting, graphics, sculpture, architecture, music - are changing tremendously. An analysis of the cultural monuments of the Renaissance testifies to the departure from many of the most important principles of the feudal worldview. In the creator of a work of art, who is gradually freeing himself from church ideology, the most valued is a sharp artistic view of things, professional independence, special skills, and his creations acquire a self-sufficient, and not a sacred character.

A characteristic feature of the art of the Renaissance was an unprecedented flourishing of realistic painting. The realistic portrait of the Renaissance is associated with the works of such famous artists as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Dürer, Titian. The portraits are permeated with the pathos of the affirmation of the individual, the consciousness that the diversity and brightness of individuals is a necessary feature of a normal developing society. It was in the Renaissance that painting for the first time reveals the possibilities inherent in it for a wide coverage of life, the depiction of human activity and the surrounding living environment. Medieval asceticism and contempt for everything earthly are now being replaced by an avid interest in the real world, in man, in the consciousness of the beauty and grandeur of nature.

It should be noted that the development of science was of great importance for painting, as well as for art in general. In art, the paths of scientific and artistic comprehension of the world and man begin to intertwine. The true image of the world and man had to be based on their knowledge, therefore, the cognitive principle played a particularly important role in the art of this time. Passion for science contributed to the mastery of human anatomy, the development of a realistic perspective, the spectacular transmission of the air environment, the skill of building angles, all that was necessary for painters to truly depict a person and the reality surrounding him. A new system of artistic vision of the world is being developed, based on trust in human sensory perceptions, primarily visual ones. To portray as we see, in unity with the environment - this is the initial principle of the Renaissance artists.

In the period of the late Renaissance, this was supplemented by the development of a system of techniques that give direct emotional expressiveness to a brushstroke, mastery of the transmission of the effects of consecration, comprehension of the principles of light-air perspective. The creators of the theory of perspective are such famous artists as Masaccio, Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci. The discovery of perspective was of no small importance; it helped to expand the range of depicted phenomena, to include space, landscape, and architecture in painting.

The progressive humanistic content of the culture of the Renaissance was also vividly expressed in theatrical art, which was significantly influenced by ancient drama. He is characterized by an interest in the inner world of a person endowed with features of a powerful individuality. The distinctive features of the theatrical art of the Renaissance were the development of the traditions of folk art, life-affirming pathos, a bold combination of tragic and comic, poetic and buffoonish-areal elements. Such is the theater of Italy, Spain, England.

In architecture, the ideals of life-affirming humanism, the desire for a harmoniously clear beauty of forms, affected with no less force than in other forms of art and caused a decisive turn in the development of architecture. The appeal to the classical tradition played a particularly important role. It manifested itself not only in the rejection of Gothic forms and the revival of the ancient order system, but also in the classical proportionality of proportions, in the development of a centric type of buildings in temple architecture with an easily visible interior space.

Secular buildings were widely developed, these are various city buildings - town halls, houses of merchant guilds, universities, market fountains. At the same time, along with the architecture that serves the social needs of the city, a completely new type of architecture is emerging compared to the Middle Ages, the dwelling of a wealthy burgher - the palazzo, which with extraordinary ease reflects the spirit of the festive atmosphere reigning in the palaces of the aristocrats of that time. Thus, art in the Renaissance entered a new stage of development, in which it sought to cognize and display the real world, its beauty, richness, diversity through new methods and techniques.

1.2 The place of music in the Renaissance art system

The general laws of the development of art, a new philosophical and aesthetic understanding of the essence and nature of harmony, characteristic of the Renaissance, were also manifested in music. Like other forms of art of that time, music is also characterized by an active upsurge of creative forces, humanistic tendencies.

It should be noted that music during this period occupies a special place in the system of arts, yielding the dominant place only to painting. According to Leonardo da Vinci, music was just "the younger sister of painting" and even served her. “Painting surpasses music and dominates it”, “Music is the servant of painting”.

One cannot but agree with the definition of a great artist, music really occupied far from the first place in the system of arts, but, nevertheless, it played a huge role in the culture of the Renaissance, left an imprint on subsequent development, both in the field of musical culture and art in general . The musical culture of the Renaissance is a kind of transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age, to an era in which this art sounds and is perceived in a new way.

Music possessed, perhaps, especially broad possibilities of social influence; more than other arts, it was all-pervading: an invariable part of the life of ordinary people, the property of many groups, which significantly distinguishes it from the music of the Middle Ages. The departure from the medieval tradition is most noticeable in Ramis da Pareja's treatise "Practical Music". Ramis says: “Let no one be afraid of either the grandeur of philosophy, or the complexity of arithmetic, or the intricacies of proportions. its task is to teach not only philosophers or mathematicians, anyone familiar with the foundations of grammar will understand this work of ours. Here both a mouse and an elephant can swim alike; and both Daedalus and Icarus can fly by. In this treatise, Ramis sharply criticizes medieval music, says that theorists wrote their compositions only for musicians - professionals and scientists, while music, in his opinion, should cover a wider segment of the population. Undoubtedly, the work of Ramis had a significant impact on his contemporaries, the traditions of the Middle Ages were greatly undermined, the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age, to the Renaissance, is underway.

The Renaissance, with its humanistic worldview, had a huge impact on musical culture. For musical art, humanism meant, first of all, deepening into the feelings of a person, recognizing a new aesthetic value behind them. This contributed to the identification and implementation of the strongest properties of musical specificity. The most distinct features of the early Renaissance were found in the art of the Italian Ars nova of the XIV century, the main representative of which was Francesco Landino. In his work, emphasis is placed on secular professional art, which broke with the circle of images and aesthetics of cult music and relied, first of all, on folk songs, written no longer in Latin, but in the national language.

In the future, a wave of transformations in the field of musical art swept other European countries. In French music, a polyphonic song appeared - chanson, representatives: K. Zhaneken, K. de Sermisi, G. Kotelet and others; this genre was imbued with folk-everyday genre, gravitating towards realistic program depiction, which testified to a sharp departure from church music. In the music of Spain, song genres of folk origin, such as villancico and romance, are marked with Renaissance features. German professional music is characterized by a polyphonic song with a main melody in tenor, which gravitates towards a harmonious choral warehouse.

In the Renaissance, the intensive development of instrumental music begins, while maintaining a connection with vocal genres. The influence of folk art on spiritual music is growing, especially in countries covered by the anti-Catholic Reformation movement, which brought to life Hussite hymns in the Czech Republic, Protestant chant in Germany, Huguenot psalms in France. However, the church continued to play the role of a powerful organizational center, being the conductor of the official ideology, it brought up the bulk of professional composers.

But, even despite this, the advanced secular vocal and vocal-instrumental genres increasingly loudly declared their right to a more significant place in musical culture, sought to supplant masses, motets and genres of church music close to them. This was due to the fact that these genres, intended either for the church (in the masterful performance of a well-organized choir chapel), or (motet) for the court of a particular king, prince, duke (in artistic transmission by means of a court chapel) were not very conducive to expression of his own personality. Only over time, when a different aesthetic atmosphere developed in humanistic circles, did lyricism and drama get a wider and freer embodiment, first in the Italian madrigal, and then in the early examples of a new genre - "drama on music", that is, Italian opera.

The Italian, German and English madrigal and song genres clearly reflected the attention to the inner world of the individual, characteristic of the humanistic art of the Renaissance. A significant manifestation of advanced realistic trends in music was not only the creation of new plots, new musical and poetic images, but also far-reaching changes in the means of musical expression. Folk melody appears in many genres of composer music. Folk songs are used as a cantus firmus (the basis of a repeatedly repeated melody that went in the second voice from the bottom of polyphonic works) and in polyphonic music. The further development of polyphony in the west of Europe led to the development and consolidation of the laws of the so-called "strict style" - one of the peaks of the then polyphonic music. Strict style to this day is an essential stage in the history of polyphony.

The main, main achievement of advanced music was the new character of the entire intonation-melodic development, smoothness, flexibility, melodiousness; a more significant degree of generalization of the melody of the "big breath" compared to the past - the most vivid expression of human experiences.

A great achievement of the musical culture of the Renaissance was the development of instrumental music based on new varieties of melodic stringed instruments that allowed "singing" on instruments (viola, bowed lyre, gamba, violin), and on the other hand, a significant expansion of the expressive possibilities of keyboard instruments ( organ, clavichord, harpsichord) in relation to chord-harmonic progressions. The lute is also rapidly improving - one of the most common instruments for everyday and concert music-making.

In addition, during the Renaissance, the development of professional skills associated with the emergence of metriz - singing boarding schools - a kind of choir chapels, where teaching singing, playing the organ, musical theory and general subjects was carried out from early childhood and ensured the systematic improvement of the musical abilities of students.

This is how a new type of musician is being formed - not an amateur from aristocrats, not a juggler and a stud man, but a professional who has received a special musical education.

The consolidation of musical professionalism led to the creation of national musical schools of excellence, which took shape in the largest centers of urban musical culture, which had great educational opportunities. One of the earliest forms in Western Europe was the polyphony of England, which rapidly developed and flourished in the works of Dönstepl in the first half of the 15th century. The most influential was the Dutch or Franco-Flemish school, in which such famous composers G. Dufay, J. Okegema, J. Obrecht, O. Lasso worked. Working in various countries, they combined the features of a number of national musical cultures: Dutch, German, French, Italian, English, created a highly developed polyphonic style, mainly choral, in which Renaissance features were clearly expressed.

By the middle of the 16th century, the direct successors of the Dutch polyphonists and the leading European composer schools were the Roman school, headed by Palestrina, in whose work Renaissance features were combined with features that reflected the influence of the Counter-Reformation, and the Venetian school, headed by D. Gabrieli, who already had baroque features. . The national schools were characterized by the use of new musical means, which brought coherence and unity into the composition. The main musical means that introduced coherence and unity into the compositions was imitation, that is, the repetition of a melody by the incoming voice, immediately before being performed by another voice. In schools, there were peculiar types of imitations: canonical, imitation in circulation, increase, decrease, which subsequently led to the highest contrapuntal form - fugue.

The style of the presented national schools was reflected in the works of outstanding polyphonists from other countries - K. Morales and T. Victoria (Spain), W. Byrd and T. Tallis (England), M. Zalensky from Poland, and many others.

Thus, music occupied a somewhat special place among the arts of the Renaissance, both due to its specificity and depending on the conditions of its existence in society. Nevertheless, she was the art of her time, expressed it, experienced the difficulties and contradictions characteristic of it, developed her own style in accordance with it, won previously unthinkable victories and won new creative successes.

Chapter 2 Dance Culture in the Renaissance

2.1 Music and dance: aspects of interaction

So, musical culture occupied a special place in the art and culture of the Renaissance. Considering music, it is impossible not to refer to its various spheres. One of these areas is the art of dance.

Dance - a kind of art in which artistic images are created by means of plastic movements and a rhythmically clear and continuous change in the expressive positions of the human body. It should be noted that music and dance have been actively interacting for many centuries. Dance is inextricably linked with music, emotional and figurative content, which is embodied in its choreographic composition, movements , figures.

Ever since antiquity, we find a kind of synthesis of music, poetry, dance, for the Greeks they were not different arts, but one, unified whole. To designate this unified art, the word "chorea" was used, which came from the word "chorus" that entered the Russian language, which only meant not so much collective singing as collective dance. In the future, the word "chorea" is transformed into choreography, which began to denote the art of dance itself, or, more precisely, the art of composing a dance.

In the era of the Middle Ages, features of the relationship between music and dance are also revealed, which embraces more complex techniques and forms, dance music becomes predominantly instrumental. The main influence on its structure and other features begins to have choreography, which is characterized by an increasingly uniform and periodic movement of the dancers. Dance rhythms willingly penetrate the genres of instrumental music intended exclusively for listening. For such dances, a significant complication of the musical language is characteristic: the role of through development increases, there is a violation of dance periodic structures by sequences, polyphonic techniques. As a result, the further connection between musical culture and dance becomes more complex and specific.

A huge transformation of music and dance took place during the Renaissance. Dance, dance music are the most important layers of the Renaissance culture. The development of musical art during the Renaissance was closely connected with the development of dance, since almost all major composers focused on dance in their compositions. Dance rhythms penetrate the genres of instrumental music intended exclusively for listening. Pavane, galliard, gigue, chimes, volta and other types of folk dances became the material for virtuoso compositions: the flexibility of melodies, the clarity of periods, and the continuous connection of motives were developed. Musicians borrow melodies and rhythms from folk songs and dances for genres of instrumental music, this can be seen especially clearly in such a work of musical culture as a suite.

At the initial stage of its development, the music of the suite had an applied character - they danced to it. It was a kind of combination of lute, and later clavier and orchestral dance pieces. In the 15th-16th centuries, the prototype of the suite was a series of three or more dances (for various instruments) that accompanied court processions and ceremonies, as well as paired combinations of contrasting dances (pavane - galliard, passamezzo - saltarello, etc.). The most typical basis for the dance suite was the set of dances that developed in the suites of I.Ya. Froberger: allemande - courant - sarabande - gigue. But for the development of the dramaturgy of the suite cycle, a certain removal from everyday dances was required. This turning point occurs in the Renaissance, and only then is most clearly reflected in the music of the 17th century. Since the middle of the 17th century, the dance suite, having lost its applied purpose, exists mainly under the names partita (German), lessons(English), balletto, sonata da camera, ordre(French), and sometimes as a "collection of clavier pieces". Thus, through transformation and interaction with music, it becomes part of the musical art, influences the formation of the sonata form. Artistic heights in this genre were reached by J. S. Bach (French and English suites, partitas for clavier, for violin and cello solo) and G. F. Handel (17 clavier suites).

Concerning other aspects, first of all, it is worth noting the impact that dance music had on the formation of a homophonic-harmonic warehouse. It is with her that professional art, in the midst of polyphonic church polyphony, comes homophonic-harmonic thinking, clearly divided, thematically bright melody, periodic rhythm; there is a formation of tonal organization (for example, the major mode, new for that time, was the first to establish itself in the dances of the Renaissance.

In dance music are the origins of many major instrumental forms on which all classical art is based (period, simple three-part form, variational, cyclic). The emancipation of instrumental music is largely connected with dance literature (new genres appear), the formation of independent clavier (later - piano), lute, and orchestral styles. The wealth of dance images captured in classical music is enormous. And this is not surprising: after all, the figurative implementation of dance rhythms and intonations, along with song folklore, plays an important role in strengthening the realistic foundations of musical art. Composers invariably embody facial expressions, gesture, plasticity in the movement of dance or march in their works, turning to dance music when creating instrumental (chamber, symphonic) and vocal, including opera compositions.

Thus, it should be noted the important role of dance in the musical culture of Western Europe, starting from the Renaissance. Dance rhythms attracted major composers, and music based on such rhythms, in turn, influenced the practice and theory of dance. The music required the dance to follow its discoveries, absorb something new and interact with other art forms. Evidence of such a shift is given to us by the dances of the Renaissance, as a symbol of the formation of dance art on a new path of development.

2.2 Choreography on the outskirts of self-determination

Among other types of art in the Renaissance, dancing begins to stand out. The dance becomes especially popular and achieves unprecedented success in its development. If in previous eras dance was just a part of a cult or general entertainment, then in the Renaissance, choreographic art has new functions, a new attitude to dance. The sinfulness, unworthiness of this occupation, characteristic of the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, it turns into an obligatory accessory of secular life and becomes one of the most necessary skills for a well-mannered and educated person (along with such skills as skillful possession of a sword, the ability to ride horses, pleasant and speak politely, oratorize subtly). Dance flows into the general course of transformations: under the influence of music, it turns into a professional art.

Choreography is embarking on the path to self-determination: art is being streamlined, establishing certain rules and norms, honing techniques and structural forms, there is a division of dance types: folk (peasant) and court (noble-feudal) dance, which began in the Middle Ages, continues. This process proceeded gradually and was associated with the growing stratification of society and the resulting differences between the way of life of ordinary people and the nobility. “Spontaneity has passed,” writes Kurt Sachs. – The court and folk dances were separated once and for all. They will constantly influence one another, but their goals have become fundamentally different.

If folk dances retain their relaxed, rough character, then the style of court dances becomes more and more solemn, measured, and somewhat prim. This was due to several factors. Firstly, the lush and heavy clothing style of the feudal lords ruled out energetic, strenuous movements and sudden jumps. Secondly, the strict regulation of manners, rules of conduct and all dance etiquette leads to the exclusion of pantomime and improvisational elements from the dance.

There is a significant change in the technique of dance: a balance between movements and rhythms of the dance, periods of oscillation from rest to movement and from rest to tension, rhythm alternation in one dance are ordered. In addition, the technique of performance changes: Dances with a round dance and linear-rank composition are replaced by paired (duet) dances, which are built on complex movements and figures that have the character of a more or less frank love game. The basis of the choreographic pattern is the rapid change of episodes, different in the nature of the movements and in the number of participants.

The need to regulate dance etiquette contributes to the formation of a cadre of professional dance masters. Dance masters create the canonical forms of dance, which are diligently and punctually studied by a privileged society. This is largely facilitated by textbooks, where movements are systematized, an attempt is made to fix dance compositions. Arguing the importance of this moment in the history of dance, Kurt Sachs especially notes Northern Italy, in which, first of all, professional dance training arose. And, indeed, the most magnificent dance art flourishes in Italy. Balls in Florence of the 15th-16th centuries are an example of splendor, brilliance, ingenuity. Italian dance teachers are invited to various countries. “Professional dancers used to be wandering mimes and despicable jugglers,” writes Sachs, a northern Italian dance teacher who held an honorable position. He was a companion of princes, sometimes a confidante; at Venetian weddings, where it was customary to introduce the bride in a silent dance, he could perform instead of the father. The teachers were especially interested in creating schools for teaching dance. And, already in the 15th century, special schools appeared in Italy, the profession of a dance teacher was firmly established. Thus it is probable that in the 16th century Italy was the queen of the dance, just as it seems to have been in the 15th century.

Domenico from Piacenza is considered the first Italian theorist of dance art. Domenico da Piacenza at the turn of the XIV - XV century composed a treatise "On the Art of Dance and Dance". The book consists of two parts. The first part is devoted to the dance as a whole and defines its five elements: measure, demeanor, division of the platform, memory and elevation. Measure is the main principle of connection between fast and slow movements in music; the division of the site is essential for the composition of a group dance; memory is needed to actually create the dance; the manner of holding frees the dance from motionless and outdated forms; elevation is designed for the development of dance technique. The other part of the treatise establishes the categories of basic movements. Here he divides movements into two types: artificial and natural. Natural movements - simple and double step, noble posture, turn and half turn, bow and jump. Artificial movements include kicking, mincing step and jumping with a variable leg.

In addition, it is worth noting another theorist and teacher of dance - Guglielmo Embreo, who composed the Treatise on the Art of Dance. In his treatise, he also advises to coordinate movements with the measure set by music. He introduces the term contro tempo - against the pace, which must be obeyed in order to succeed in a learned dance. In addition, he puts forward the concept of an aria, which implies the ability to move between tempos and move from one dance to another. Guglielmo's work cannot be overestimated, he expressed the humanistic worldview of the Renaissance when he declared dance to be a "free-thinking science" as sublime and significant as others, and more than those turned to human nature.

Among the Italian works on choreography of the 16th century, Fabrizio Caroso's book The Dancer, published in 1581, deserves attention. This book is a kind of manual intended for ballroom dancing, however, it can be said that these rules were also used in stage dance, although more representative steps prevailed in them. In the book, he tries to systematize not only the dances, but also the movements that make them up. For example, he divides curtsies into "important" ("grave"), "small" ("minima"), "medium" ("semiminima"). The "medium" curtsy included a jump. Consistent with the variation of the dance with the variety of musical rhythms, Coroso already used positions close to the first, third and fourth positions of classical dance, as well as pirouettes and various types of jumps, including skidding (entrecha). The dance technique included acrobatic moves, such as the saut de noeud (knot jump), but this technique later disappeared. The new technique allowed Coroso to compose ballets in five, six and even ten parts, according to the music. Caroso demanded that the evolution of the dancers should correspond to the size of the ancient versification, and he mentioned the dactyl, the sapphic stanza, the spodei. He wrote about the dance - a free ensemble, "performed with mathematical precision, in accordance with the verses of Ovid."

Caroso undoubtedly laid the foundation for the development of ballet, its technique and performance. Naturally, the first ballet performances appeared in Italy. So, for example, in 1489, the Lombard Bergonzo di Bota, in honor of the marriage of the Duke of Milan, Galazo Visconti, created a magnificent theatrical celebration in which dance alternated with singing, music and recitation. Italian choreography had a great influence on the first French ballets. By the end of the 16th century, ballet performances appeared with a complete plot, which is revealed through dance, singing, poetic recitative, complex and magnificent decoration. The experience of the young Italian ballet, its pedagogical methods and works on choreography were accepted by many European countries. Thus, in the Renaissance, one can already speak of the beginnings of ballet.

Another famous author on the “art of dance” is Tuano Arbo, a French writer and priest. His contribution to the development of dance is no less significant than that of the Italian dance masters. "Orchezography" by Tuano Arbaud is the most popular treatise containing information on French bass dances of the 16th century. Arbo is trying to restore medieval dance, to redesign it in a new way, and from here his fame as the first specialist in the reconstruction of dance is born.

Summing up, we can say that the dance art is on a par with other types of art and is not inferior to them in any way. The dance is stylized, brought into the system. The vast possibilities of the human body are opening up. The dance moves from telling reality to expressing an abstract thought. Further - from court performance to theatrical dance.

During the Renaissance, dance becomes a way of social entertainment and communication. At the end of the 16th century, everyone believed that dance was necessary for society as a means of playful flirting to demonstrate the grace and charm of ladies and the strength and prowess of gentlemen. Balls were arranged on the occasion of all significant events, general and private. The beauty and sophistication of each participant was important for creating a festive ballroom atmosphere, confirming the high socio-political status of the owner and facilitating marriages, which at that time was extremely important for maintaining the structure of society. The ability to dance was honed by the nobles and the middle class who imitated them by daily practice under the guidance of many teachers. At the royal courts there were choreographers - dance teachers, their duties included teaching dances to persons of both sexes, as well as staging a spectacle in general.

So professional dance began to enter into all kinds of spectacles. The dance, which in the Middle Ages was intended for a "sacred act", retreated in the 15th century before the festivities of a secular nature. Most of all at that time they were fond of masquerades - masks were of particular importance in this era. Dance was also involved in street processions, in which whole performances of a dance character were played out. More often, such street processions interpreted pagan stories, the content of myths, which was typical for the Renaissance, as for an era turned to antiquity.

Carnivals also made a great contribution to dance as a public entertainment. The most magnificent of these were the triumphs (trionfi), performances on mythological subjects with skillfully executed scenery. Somewhat more modest were curries (carri, from Italian carro - “wagon”) - masquerades of artisans and merchants in Italian cities: here crowds of masked people marched behind the decorative symbols of their professions. Spectacles, where music, singing, recitation, pantomime and dance were mixed, were accompanied by solemn meals, various court feasts.

But still, the dance of the Renaissance is much wider than simple entertainment. At this time, ancient ideas about the deepest impact of dance on the spiritual and physical condition of a person are being revived. On the pages of numerous dance treatises, the idea is often expressed that dance is by no means pure plasticity, but a way of reflecting spiritual movements. “As for the highest perfection of dances, it consists in improving the spirit and body and bringing them to the best possible location,” wrote the French music theorist, philosopher, physicist and mathematician M. Mersenne in one of his works. Often the dance, as in ancient times, is given a cosmological

meaning. It is no coincidence that the interest and awareness in matters of dance art are revealed by the persons of the clergy - the abbot de Pure, canon Arbaud, the priest Menetrier.

2.3 Genre palette of dance art

The new attitude towards dance during the Renaissance gave rise to numerous dance genres. Judging by the titles of the pieces placed in various musical collections, practical guides and treatises, the picture is unusually variegated: some dances quickly go out of fashion; others, having appeared in one century, retain their significance in another (for example, saltarello, bass dance, branle), some of them change the nature and style of choreography over time.

Each province has its own dances and its own style of performance. Noverre wrote that the minuet came to us from Angouleme, that the birthplace of the burre dance is Auvergne. In Lyon they will find the first rudiments of the gavotte, in Provence, the tambourine.

So, All everyday dances of this time were divided into two main groups: Bassa danza (French basses danses) - that is, “low” dances in which there were no jumps, and the legs almost did not rise above the floor (pavane, allemande, chimes , sarabande, etc.); Alta danza (French haute danses) - that is, “high” dances of round dance, in which the dancers twirled and jumped (moreska, galliard, volta, saltarello, various types of branles, etc.)

In the era of the early Renaissance, the opposition of dances of slow and more lively movement (bassa danza and alta danza) is characteristic. It is found both at balls and in emerging professional music already in the late Middle Ages. In the musical sources of the 14th - early 15th centuries, groupings of dances in 2 are common: the 1st dance of each pair is sustained in an even time signature and a slow tempo, the 2nd - in a 3-beat time signature and a fast tempo. More than others, pairs of pavan - galliard passamezzo - saltarello were common. They interacted with each other, but, nevertheless, retained their individual traits.

Regarding the genres of the dance art of the era, there were a fairly large number of them, but the most popular were: bass dance, pavane, chimes, branle, moresca, galliard, saltarello and volta. In order to understand what the specificity of each of the dances was, it is necessary to refer to their description and interpretation.

bass dance(French basse danse - "low dance") - the collective name of court dances at a moderate or moderately slow pace and, as a rule, in a 4-beat size, common in France, Italy, the Netherlands between the 2nd half of the XIV and the middle XVI century. The origin of the name is not entirely clear. Perhaps it is associated with the practice of performing the music of these dances on low register instruments, and perhaps with the absence of high jumps of dancers in bass dances. Due to the lack of fast pas and jumping movements characteristic of "high dances" (French - haute danse, Italian - alta danza), bass dances were often called "promenade". The compositional drawing could be built in the form of a round dance, a procession. The bass dances were, as it were, a small choreographic composition in which the dancers showed themselves to the assembled society and demonstrated their wealth, splendor of outfits and nobility of manners. In the 15th century, according to K. Sachs, bass dance “… did not follow any established order of steps. Motley, like colors in a kaleidoscope, he combined new movements every time. Bass dance music, often chorale in nature, was usually improvised on the basis of the cantus firmus. Free choreography also corresponded to an open (open) musical structure with an arbitrary number of sections. Various instrumental compositions were used to perform bass dance: lute, harp and drum; trombone, flute with snare drum, etc. As one of the parts, bass dance was included in the early instrumental suites. Varieties of bass dance: Bassadans- a more refined Italian version of bass dance, popular in the 15th century. Differs in a more mobile pace; beer - Italian dance of the 15th century, the pace is even faster than that of the Bassadans, until the 16th century the name "beer" was protected by a fast 3-beat dance, before which the pavane and saltarello were often performed.

pavana- solemn slow dance. The origin of this dance is quite ambiguous: according to one version, the pavane is a native Italian dance, its name is associated with the place of origin, the city of Padua, according to another version, the pavane is a dance of Spanish origin. There is reason to believe that the term "padovana" was also used as a word denoting a generic concept - a certain type of dance that combines the pavana and its variety - the passamezzo.

Already at the beginning of the 16th century, the pavane became one of the most popular court dances: it was danced in a cloak and with a sword during solemn ceremonies: when the bride left for church, when the clergy performed religious processions, when the princes, members of the city government left. Pavane music is characterized by: clearness of structure, often squareness of the metro-rhythmic structure, predominantly chord presentation, sometimes colored with passages.

There is evidence that the performance of the pavane was accompanied by tambourine, flute, oboes and trombones, supported by a drum that emphasized the rhythm of the dance. In each country, the nature of the movements and the manner of performing pavanes had their own characteristics: in France, the steps were smooth, slow, graceful, sliding; in Italy, they were more lively, restless, alternating with small jumps. In the 2nd half of the 16th century, the pavane practically fell into disuse in Europe, remaining, however, until the mid-1620s. one of the most popular dances in England. The instrumental pavane reached its dawn in the work of the English virginalists. Related pavanes were: pavanilla- instrumental dance, popular in Italy in the 1st half of the 17th century, was more lively in character and pace; paduana - it became widespread at the end of the Renaissance, and was characteristic of the 17th century - at least two different dances were called that: a two-part pavane and a 3-part dance performed after the passamezzo; passamezzo- Italian dance, differs from pavanes in a more mobile pace. Literally translated as “dance in 1.5 steps”, which indicates the faster nature of his movement than in the pavan. There were two most common varieties "old" (antico) and "modern" (moderno), stemming from the characteristics of the harmonic accompaniment plan.

Courant- court dance, of Italian origin, from the Italian word corrente, which means the flow of water, smooth, uniform. The compositional pattern of the dance usually went along an oval, but it could be either an elongated square or an octagon, which made it possible to make zigzag movements characteristic of the Italian piva dance that existed in the 15th century. The chime was simple and complex. The first consisted of simple, gliding steps, performed predominantly forward. The complex chime had a pantomimic character: three gentlemen invited three ladies to participate in the dance, they took the ladies to the opposite corner of the hall and asked them to dance, the ladies refused, the gentlemen, having been refused, left, but then returned again and kneeled in front of the ladies. Only after the pantomime scene did the dance begin. In a complex chime, movements were performed forward, backward and to the side. In the middle of the 16th century, the pantomime part of the dance disappeared. The Courante has changed its time signature many times. At first it was 2/4, later it was triple.

branle- originally a folk round dance, later also a ballroom, court dance of the 15th - 17th centuries. The very word branle, meaning in French - rocking, round dance, also characterizes one of the main movements - rocking the body. Its numerous varieties are known, differing from each other in the size of the tempo, choreography (simple ballet, double ball, ballet dancer, shoe ballet, ballet with a torch, ballet with kisses, etc.) and local variants (B. from Poitou, B. from Champagne). The pace of the dance is moderately fast, lively. The size is usually 2-beat, sometimes 3-beat (in the "jolly branle", which included jumps and swings) and 4-beat (in Champagne). Folk branle - energetic, impetuous, chased, ballroom - more smooth and calm, with a large number of curtsies. Sometimes it was accompanied by singing (couplets with a chorus) and playing folk instruments (pipe, flute, tambourine, bagpipes). In the 15th century, it was performed as the end of the bass dance, from which, perhaps, it comes. In terms of choreography, it was still quite primitive, especially since its musical accompaniment consisted of rather monotonous tambourine beats, flute sounds and the monotonous singing of the dancers. But, at the same time, it should be noted that the branle was the primary source of all salon dances that appeared later, playing a big role in the development of ballroom choreography.

Moreska -(moresca(Italian) - literally "Moorish", morisdance - from English morris dance) - musical - dance scene. The scene symbolically reproduced the struggle between Christians and Moors. In Italy, the dance was called "Morisca", the same name was given to the Moors who were baptized and converted to Christianity. Originating in Spain, the moresca was originally a folk dance and was danced by two groups. During the Renaissance, the moresca was one of the most popular dances, becoming an attribute of various urban theatrical spectacles and performances of the emerging musical theater. There, she loses her original features of the folk game (while retaining, however, the mask of the Moor), and gradually turns into a figured dance of a solemn, often warlike character. Later, in the 17th century, the term moresca denoted a ballet or pantomime dance in an opera: for example, Monteverdi introduced the moresca into the finale of the opera "Orpheus" -1607.

galliard(gagliarda, ital. cheerful, bold, cheerful) - an old dance of Romanesque origin of the late XV - XVII centuries. Apparently, it comes from Northern Italy, in various regions and cities it bore the imprint of local customs and mores. This is a cheerful and lively dance, originating in folk choreography, although it was most widespread among the privileged classes, retaining the features of peasant dances - jumps and abrupt movements, often having joking names (“crane step”, “cow kick”). Like the chimes, it had the character of a kind of dialogue. Accompanied by a small orchestral ensemble or playing the lute and guitar. The galliards of the 16th century are characterized by a 3-meter, moderately fast tempo, chord warehouse, diatonic. It was usually performed after a slow 4-beat pavane, varying its melodic and

metric pattern. A similar sequence of a slow 4-beat pavane and a fast 3-beat galliard was the prototype of the Baroque instrumental suite.

Saltarella- folk italian dance. Its name comes from the Italian word saltare - to jump, jump. He is known in Romagna, Lazo, San Marino, In Abruzzio. Each region performs it differently. Saltarella is a very simple dance, it does not have fixed figures. The main movement is balance. But the performers must have dexterity and strength, as the pace in the dance increases all the time, reaching a very stormy one. Saltarella is a pair dance, the number of couples participating in the dance can be very large. Like many other folk dances, the saltarella sometimes begins with a playful pantomime scene. In some areas of Italy, for example in Giogaria, the saltarella exists as a low jumping dance.

There are also its round dance varieties. In the round dance saltarella, the dancers stand closely pressed against each other, their bodies are tilted forward, their heads almost collide in the center of the circle; hands are placed on each other's shoulders. Bare feet glide gently on the ground. The performers sway to the rhythm of the movement of the legs. The performance of the saltarella in Romagna is peculiar. Here it is accompanied by a song sung by one of the participants, and is, as it were, a demonstration of dexterity. Women put a glass on their heads, filled to the brim with water or wine. During complex and fast movements, not a single drop should be spilled.

Volta- pair dance of Italian origin. Its name comes from the Italian word voltare, which means "to turn". Usually the dance is performed by one couple (man and woman), but the number of couples can be increased. Like many other folk dances, the volta, soon after its appearance, began to be performed at court festivities. In the 16th century, she was known in all European countries, but she had the greatest success at the French court. However, already under Louis XIII, the French court of the Volta does not dance. This dance lasted the longest in Italy.

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Historian Jules Michelet in the XIX century was the first to use the concept of "Renaissance". The musicians and composers that will be discussed in the article belonged to the period that began in the XIV century, when the medieval dominance of the church was replaced by secular culture with its interest in the human person.

Renaissance music

European countries at different times entered a new era. A little earlier, they arose in Italy, but the Dutch school dominated the musical culture, where for the first time special metrises (shelters) were created at the cathedrals to train future composers. The main genres of that time are presented in the table:

Most of the Renaissance in the Netherlands - this is Guillaume Dufay, Jacob Obrecht, Josquin Despres.

Great Dutch

Johannes Okegem He was educated at the Notre Dame Metrisa (Antwerp), and in the 40s of the 15th century he became a chorister at the court of Duke Charles I (France). Subsequently, he headed the chapel of the royal court. Having lived to a ripe old age, he left a great legacy in all genres, having established himself as an outstanding polyphonist. Manuscripts of his 13 masses called Chigi codex have come down to us, one of which is painted for 8 voices. He used not only other people's, but also his own melodies.

Orlando Lasso was born on the territory of modern Belgium (Mons) in 1532. His musical ability manifested itself in early childhood. The boy was kidnapped from home three times to make him a great musician. He spent his entire adult life in Bavaria, where he performed as a tenor at the court of Duke Albrecht V, and then led the chapel. His highly professional team contributed to the transformation of Munich into the musical center of Europe, where many famous composers of the Renaissance visited.

Such talents as Johann Eckard, Leonard Lechner, Italian D. Gabrieli came to study to him . He found his last resting place in 1594 on the territory of the Munich church, leaving a grandiose legacy: more than 750 motets, 60 masses and hundreds of songs, among which the most popular was Susanne un jour. His motets ("Prophecies of the Sibyls") were innovative, but he is also known for his secular music, in which there was a lot of humor (vilanella O bella fusa).

Italian school

Outstanding Renaissance composers from Italy, in addition to traditional directions, actively developed instrumental music (organ, bowed string instruments, clavier). The lute became the most common instrument, and at the end of the 15th century, the harpsichord, the forerunner of the piano, appeared. Based on the elements of folk music, two most influential composer schools developed: the Roman (Giovanni Palestrina) and the Venetian (Andrea Gabrieli).

Giovanni Pierluigi took the name Palestrina after the name of the town near Rome, in which he was born and served in the main church as a choirmaster and organist. The date of his birth is very approximate, but he died in 1594. During his long life he wrote about 100 masses and 200 motets. His "Mass of Pope Marcellus" was admired by Pope Pius IV and became a model of Catholic sacred music. Giovanni is the brightest representative of vocal singing without musical accompaniment.

Andrea Gabrieli together with his student and nephew, Giovanni worked in the chapel of St. Mark (XVI century), "coloring" the singing of the choir with the sound of the organ and other instruments. The Venetian school gravitated more toward secular music, and during the production of Sophocles' Oedipus on the stage of Andrea Gabrieli, choir music was written, an example of choral polyphony and a harbinger of the future of operatic art.

Features of the German school

German land put forward Ludwig Senfl, the best polyphonist of the 16th century, who, however, did not reach the level of the Dutch masters. Songs of poets-singers from among artisans (meistersingers) are also special music of the Renaissance. German composers represented singing corporations: tinsmiths, shoemakers, weavers. They united across the territory. An outstanding representative of the Nuremberg school of singing was Hans Sachs(years of life: 1494-1576).

Born in the family of a tailor, he worked all his life as a shoemaker, striking with his erudition and musical and literary interests. He read the Bible in the interpretation of the great reformer Luther, knew ancient poets and appreciated Boccaccio. Being a folk musician, Sachs did not master the forms of polyphony, but created melodies of a song warehouse. They were close to the dance, easy to remember and had a certain rhythm. The most famous work was "Silver Chant".

Renaissance: musicians and composers of France

The musical culture of France truly experienced a renaissance only in the 16th century, when the social ground was prepared in the country.

One of the best representatives is Clement Janequin. It is known that he was born in Chatellerault (end of the 15th century) and went from a singing boy to the personal composer of the king. Of his creative heritage, only secular songs published by Attenyan have survived. There are 260 of them, but those that have stood the test of time have gained real fame: “Birdsong”, “Hunting”, “Lark”, “War”, “Screams of Paris”. They were constantly reprinted and used by other authors for revision.

His songs were polyphonic and resembled choral scenes, where, in addition to onomatopoeia and cantilena voicing, there were exclamations responsible for the dynamics of the work. It was a bold attempt to find new methods of imagery.

Among the famous French composers are Guillaume Cotelet, Jacques Maudui, Jean Baif, Claudin Lejeune, Claude Goudimel , gave the music a harmonious warehouse, which contributed to the assimilation of music by the general public.

Renaissance Composers: England

The 15th century in England was influenced by the works of John Dubsteil, and XVI - William Byrd. Both masters gravitated toward sacred music. Bird began as an organist at Lincoln Cathedral and ended his career at the Royal Chapel in London. For the first time, he managed to connect music and entrepreneurship. In 1575, in collaboration with Tallis, the composer became a monopolist in the publication of musical works, which did not bring him any profit. But it took a lot of time to defend their right to property in the courts. After his death (1623) in the official documents of the chapel, he was called "the founder of music."

What did the Renaissance leave behind? Bird, in addition to published collections (Cantiones Sacrae, Gradualia), kept many manuscripts, considering them suitable only for home worship. Later published madrigals (Musica Transalpina) showed the great influence of Italian authors, but several masses and motets were included in the golden fund of sacred music.

Spain: Cristobal de Morales

The best representatives of the Spanish school of music traveled through the Vatican, performing in the papal chapel. They felt the influence of Dutch and Italian authors, so only a few managed to become famous outside their country. Renaissance composers from Spain were polyphonists creating choral works. The brightest representative Cristobal de Morales(XVI century), who headed the metriz in Toledo and trained more than one student. A follower of Josquin Despres, Cristobal brought a special technique to a number of compositions called homophonic.

The author's two requiems (the last for five voices), as well as the Mass "Armed Man" gained the greatest fame. He also wrote secular works (a cantata in honor of the conclusion of a peace treaty in 1538), but this refers to his earlier works. Heading at the end of his life a chapel in Malaga, he remained the author of sacred music.

Instead of a conclusion

Renaissance composers and their works prepared the flourishing of instrumental music of the 17th century and the emergence of a new genre - opera, where the intricacies of many voices are replaced by the primacy of one leading the main melody. They made a real breakthrough in the development of musical culture and laid the foundation for modern art.

The era of the High Renaissance.

(From the history of Italian music since 1500)

The Renaissance is a period of change in all areas of art - painting, architecture, sculpture, music. This period marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the present. The period between 1500 and 1600, called the High Renaissance, is the most revolutionary period in the history of European music, the century in which harmony was developed and opera was born.

In the 16th century, music printing first spread, in 1501 the Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci published the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, the first major collection of secular music. It was a revolution in the dissemination of music, and also contributed to the fact that the Franco-Flemish style became the dominant musical language of Europe in the next century, since, as an Italian, Petrucci mainly included the music of Franco-Flemish composers in his collection. Subsequently, he published many works and Italian composers, both secular and spiritual.

Italy becomes the center of the creation of harpsichords and violins. Many violin workshops open. One of the first masters was the famous Andrea Amati from Cremona, who laid the foundation for a dynasty of violin makers. He made significant changes to the design of the existing violins, which improved the sound and brought it closer to the modern look.
Francesco Canova da Milano (1497 - 1543) - an outstanding Italian lute player and composer of the Renaissance, created a reputation for Italy as a country of virtuoso musicians. He is still considered the best lute player of all time. After the decline of the late Middle Ages, music became an important element of culture.
During the Renaissance, the madrigal reached its peak and became the most popular musical genre of the era. Madrigalists sought to create high art, often using the reworked poetry of the great Italian poets of the late Middle Ages: Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio and others. The most characteristic feature of the madrigal was the absence of strict structural canons, the main principle was the free expression of thoughts and feelings.
Composers such as the representative of the Venetian school, Cypriano de Rore, and the representative of the Franco-Flemish school, Roland de Lassu, experimented with increasing chromatism, harmony, rhythm, texture, and other means of musical expression. Their experience will continue and culminate in the Mannerist era of Carlo Gesualdo.
In 1558, Josephfo Zarlino (1517-1590), the greatest theoretician of music from the time of Aristotle to the Baroque era, created the Fundamentals of the Harmonica, in this largest creation of musical science of the 16th century, he revived the ancient concept of a sounding number, substantiated the theoretical and aesthetic justification of a large and small triads. His teaching about music had a significant impact on Western European musical science and formed the basis of numerous later characteristics of major and minor.

The Birth of Opera (Florentine Camerata)

The end of the Renaissance was marked by the most important event in musical history - the birth of opera.
A group of humanists, musicians, and poets gathered in Florence under the auspices of their leader, Count Giovanni De Bardi (1534 - 1612). The group was called "kamerata", its main members were Giulio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei), Giloramo Mei, Emilio de Cavalieri and Ottavio Rinuccini in their younger years.
The first documented meeting of the group took place in 1573, and the most active years of the "Florence Camerata" were 1577 - 1582.
They believed that the music was "corrupted" and sought to return to the form and style of ancient Greece, believing that the art of music could be improved and, accordingly, society would also improve. Camerata criticized the existing music for its excessive use of polyphony at the expense of the intelligibility of the text and the loss of the poetic component of the work, and proposed the creation of a new musical style in which the text in monodic style was accompanied by instrumental music. Their experiments led to the creation of a new vocal and musical form - the recitative, first used by Emilio de Cavalieri, subsequently directly related to the development of opera.
At the end of the 16th century, composers began to push the boundaries of the Renaissance styles, the Baroque era came to replace it with its own characteristics and new discoveries in music. One of them was Claudio Monteverdi.

Monteverdi. Presso in Fiume Tranquillo.

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (May 15, 1567 - November 29, 1643) was an Italian composer, musician and singer. The most important composer of the Baroque, his works are often regarded as revolutionary, marking the transition in music from the Renaissance to the Baroque. He lived in an era of great change in music and was himself the man who changed it.

Monteverdi. Venite, Venite.

Monteverdi. From the opera "Orpheus"

The first officially recognized opera that meets modern standards was the opera "Daphne" (Daphne), first presented in 1598. The authors of "Daphne" were Jacopo Peri and Jacopo Corsi, libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. This opera has not survived. The first surviving opera is "Eurydice" (1600) by the same authors - Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini. This creative union still created many works, most of which have been lost.

Jacopo Peri. Tu dormi, e I dolce sonno.

Jacopo Peri. Hor che gli augelli.

Church music of the 16th century.

The 16th century is characterized by a very strong influence of the Catholic Church and its Inquisition on the development of art and science in Europe. In 1545, the Council of Trent met, one of the most important councils in the history of the Catholic Church, the purpose of which was to respond to the Reformation movement. In particular, church music was considered at this cathedral.
Some delegates sought to return to monophonic Gregorian chant and exclude counterpoint from chants, there was already a tacit ban on the use of polyphonic style in sacred music, including almost all sequences. The reason for this position was the belief that polyphonic music, due to contrapuntal plexuses, pushes the text into the background, while the musical harmony of the work is also violated.
A special committee was set up to resolve the dispute. This commission commissioned Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1514-1594), one of the greatest composers of church music, to compose trial masses, taking into account all the requirements of the parties. Palestrina created three six-voice masses, including his most famous "Mass of Pope Marcellus", dedicated to Pope Marcellus II, his patron in his youth. These works had a strong influence on the clergy and put an end to the dispute, speeches against the use of counterpoint in church music ceased.
The work of Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina is the pinnacle of the development of contrapuntal sacred music a capella, combining all possible combinations of polyphony and clarity of texts.

Palestrina. Sicut Cervus.

Palestrina. Gloria