Music History

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contenance angloise

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Characteristic quality of early-fifteenth-century English music, marked by pervasive consonance with frequent use of harmonic thirds and sixths, often in parallel motion.

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Tinctoris

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Johannes Tinctoris was a Flemish composer who settled in Naples at the court of King Ferrante I in the early 1470s. There he wrote a dozen treatises on musical topics. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the northern composers from his own generation and the precious one, and he observed a sharp break between their music and that of precious eras.

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Dufay

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Du Fay was the leading composer of his time and one of the most widely traveled. Patrons competed for his services, and the positions he held in Italy, France, and the Lowlands acquainted him with a wide range of musicians and styles. He excelled in every genre, and his music was known and sung throughout Europe.

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motets

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Polyphonic vocal composition; the specific meaning changes over time. Most fourteen- and some fifteenth-century motets feature isorhythm and may include a contratenor.

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paraphrase

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Technique in which a chant or other melody is reworked, often by altering rhythms and adding notes, and placed in a polyphonic setting.

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hymns

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Song to or in honor of a god. In the Christian tradition, song of praise sung to God.

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fauxbourdon

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Continental style of polyphony in the early Renaissance, in which two voices are written, moving mostly in parallel sixths and ending each phrase on an octave, while a third unwritten voice is sung in parallel perfect fourths below the upper voice.

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alternatim

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A term applied to two instruments (or voices) or instrumental groups (or vocal groups) that perform antiphonally.

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chansons

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Secular song with French words; used especially for polyphonic songs of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.

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fixed forms

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Schemes of poetic and musical repetition, each featuring a refrain, used in late medieval and fifteenth-century French chansons; in particular, the ballade, rondeau, and virelai.

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mass cycles

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A group of related works, comprising movements of a single larger entity.

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cantus firmus

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An existing melody, often taken from a gregorian chant, on which a new polyphonic work is based; used especially for melodies presented in long notes.

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imitation

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The act of patterning a new work after an existing work or style; especially, to borrow much of the existing work's material.

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cantus firmus mass

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Polyphonic mass in which the same cantus firmus is used in each movement, normally in the tenor.

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paraphrase mass

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Polyphonic mass in which each movement is based on the same monophonic melody, normally a chant, which is paraphrased in most or all voices rather than being used as a cantus firmus in one voice.

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Ockeghem

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Ockeghem was celebrated as a singer (he is said to have had a fine bass voice), as a composer, and as the teacher of many leading composers of the next generation.

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Obrecht

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Composed about thirty masses, twenty-eight motets, and numerous chansons, songs in Dutch, and instrumental pieces.

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Josquin Desprez

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Josquin (known by his given name becuase "des Prez" was a nickname) is regarded as the greatest composer of his time. His motets, masses, and songs were widely sung, praised, and emulated in his lifetime and for decades after his death.