Music As We Know It

One of the most important part of the early Renaissance music belongs to lute compositions.  Sadly,  the biographies of the majority Renaissance musicians and their heritage  still remain an enigma for us.  Joan Ambrosio Dalza,  an Italian lutenist and composer brought us through the centuries 42 dances and a couple of minor pieces.  It happened quite by chance because all of them were published in 1508 in an influential series of lute music in Venice. Dazla is refered there as a milanese, so we assume that he was either born or lived in Milan. Nothing else is known about his life.

Danza pieces are extremely important for our understanding of Renaissance music as all his pieces consist of entirely original music without then usual vocal singing. His dances are arranged in miniature suites.  They are easy to perform and comparatively simple. This comes as no surprise because in the series Danza admits this fact and promises to publish more complex pieces later.  Whether this famous Italian composer ever fulfilled his promise remains unknown up to this day.

Jacqueline du Pré

Probably, we would simply pass by this talented medieval composer, if he was not mentioned in the Chantilly Codex - the pivotal music manuscript of the 14th century that is considered to be one of the monuments of medieval music. His name was Johannes Cuvelier. Up to this day Johannes remains an enigma as we don’t know nothing about him before 1372 and after 1387. We don’t know the dates of his birth and death, and only by guess think that he was born in Tournai, France.

However all those rare bits of information that we possess present us an unusual for those times educated man who had big success as a composer, statesman and a poet. He also wrote biographical books, because history mentions him for the last time when he finished a manuscript about an opportunistic conqueror Bertrand du Guesclin. He was definitely a councellor of the French king Charles V, as old documents state that he was the “diseur” and “faiseur” of the monarch.

The famous Chantilly codex preserved only some of his musical works that were composed in the elaborate, elitist style known as the ars subtilior. These early French musical compositions are eccentric, whimsical, extravagant; it contains the widest diversity of emotion.

This famous medieval composer who was born in Toledo in 1221 and died in 1284 in Seville had become one of the most outstanding intellectuals of the Middle Ages. From 1252 Alfonso X king of Castile, Leon and Galicia was not just a distinguished composer, musician, poet and writer. He also created advanced code of laws, founded universities of Salamanca and Toledo, gained considerable fame in astronomy and established Castilian as a language of higher learning. His scientific achievements earned him a nickname throughout Europe - people of different nations called him El Sabio, which means “The Wise”.

Alfonso X commissioned or co-authored numerous works of music during his reign. Yet, the most important of his works is the vast compilation Cantigas de Santa Maria (”Songs to the Virgin Mary”). Luckily for us, The Cantigas collection is one of the largest musical treasures that survived from the Middle Ages. It consists of about 420 poems that are for the most part on miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary.

A famous medieval composer Jacob Senleches was also known as an excellent harpist. He developed many rhythmic and notational innovations in a medieval style known as as the ars subtilior. We are aware of his creative period that lasted from 1382 through 1395 through some scant information and a small number of transmitted exquisite compositions. However, up to this day, specialists consider Jacob as one of the central personalities of ars subtilior.

He was possibly born in the French town of Senleches and served at the court of Eleanor of Castile. One of the survived composition tells us that he laments her death in 1382 and resolves to seek his fortune in other countries. Later we find him at the service of Cardinal of Aragon Pedro de Luna. And the last written record about him came to us from a supplication to the Roman pope Benedict XIII. In this document Jacob Senleches was asking for the benefice attached to a parish church in the diocese of Cambrai.

There are some famous composers whose heritage has been ignored and neglected for a long time. It happened to the best music creators like J.S. Bach and others.  Something similar happened to Dieterich Buxtehude, whose name and creations faded in the past.  Yet, today specialists recognize him as the most important German composer of the mid-Baroque period. 

As with many other baroque composers, we know little about his life. His date of birth is still disputed but, generally, specialists agree that it was around 1637. Although Dieterich spent most of his life in Germany, he seems to be born in Denmark and always considered himself Danish.  

Known as the genius composer who influenced later generations of followers, including Bach, Hendel and even Gustav Maller, Buxtehude became reknown at his times as a virtuoso musician as well. He was highly regarded by his contemporaries as an accomplished organist and lutenist. 

Most of his life he was an organist of the famous protestant church Marienkirche in a free imperial city of Lubeck.  This envious position gave him relative freedom in his musical career and considerable creative latitude. He wrote in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, in addition to the standard organ repertoire, which are frequently performed during church services and recitals today. 

Due to his efforts, evening church concerts Abendmusik sponsored by local businessmen came into prominence. They were paid for and, thus, free for the general public.  Dieterich Buxtehude always performed there with organ and orchestrated a gigantic variety of vocal music as well.  It is interesting to note that in 1926 Marienkirche church in Lubeck renewed this tradition, so people can listen to  Abendmusic in the present days. 

The fame of Buxtehude grew and soon the crowds of young musicians and composers from all over Europe would gather to listen to his Abenmusic. Among them were Hendel, Bach, Telemann and Mattheson. Dietrich became a model for them and an influential figure.  J.S. Bach who was then a twenty year old lad walked over two hundred miles to Lubeck just to meet Dietrich and hear him play. He spent in Lubeck almost three months going religiously to each Abendmusik in Marienkirche. 

Hendel and Mattheson met Buxtehude a couple of years before his death in 1707. They quickly hit it off and got along so well, that Dieterich even offered to retire and appoint one of them as a new Marienkirche organist. There was only one stipulation - the future organist would have to marry his eldest daughter.  Apparently Dieterich’s daughter was not a beauty, as two famous composers refused and hastily left Lubeck within one day after their arrival.

It is hard to find the exact historical category for famous Italian composer Gregorio Allegri. He was born in 1582 in Rome, he mostly lived there throughout his life and died in 1652.  Roman composers of that time were stilistically conservative. Chronologically, this was the shining time of Baroque music, but most Roman composers created music closer to the late Renaissance music.  This is why Allegri’s compositions present an exotic mixture of both these two styles. 

 

Gregorio was not only the composer, he was a Catholic priest as well.  Most of his compositions are related to sacred music which helped him to get noticed by Pope and obtain a prestigious appointment in the choir of the great Sistine Chapel. 

His most celebrated composition is Miserere mei Deus based on the Biblical Psalm 50.  For centuries choir has been performing it annually during Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel.  The Miserere is also one of the most prominently recorded example of late Renaissance music as well.  This work is surrounded by mystery too because Vatican forbade its distribution or copying under the treat of excommunication.

However it did not stop the attempts to procure an illegal copy.  The teenage composer Mozart who visited the Rome in 1770 heard Miserere twice and transcribed it from memory.  Mozart’s copy was later obtained and published in England but only showed the basic music without all ornamentation for which it was famous.

There were many composers who claimed to invent a new musical genre - the opera. But, possibly the true inventor was an Italian composer Jacopo Peri. He was born in Rome in 1561 and studied music in Florence. Then he worked in a number of churches as a singer and an organist until he landed a great job at the famous Medici court.He became rather popular there growing from the position of the first tenor and organist to the pedestal of a famous composer of the court madrigals and music for plays. His style of music writing is ranging from the late Renaissance to early Baroque music.

Jacopo Peri would probably spent his life by writing incidental music for the court but in the 1590s he got acquainted and became friends with Jacopo Corsi, who at the time was the leading patron of music in Florence.

Soon they found that they share common interests. They both were living in the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles and thought highly of Greek and Roman works. In fact, they felt so strongly about the ancient art that they hold it in higher esteem than contemporary art.

The urge to return to the times of antiquity made our two composers full of desire to recreate Greek tragedy the way they understood it. They created the music and invited then popular poet Ottavio Rinuccini to write a text. At the end of their labors a first opera Dafne was born in 1597, which did not survive to our days.

Obviously, this joint work had some success because Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini started creating their second work that they named Euridice. Unlike Dafne, Euridice survived to the present day. We can see that it was a far cry from ancient Greeks understanding of the classical tragedy. Yet, during the development of both operas they introduced first recitatives and arias as the integral part of the play.

Eruidice was first staged on October 6, 1600. Jacopo Peri created a number of other operas and more pieces for court entertainment. However, he quickly went out of fashion while the star of the young reformist composer Claudio Monteverdi rose up and began to shine. Peri quietly died in 1633 in Florence, and his death was hardly noticed by any of his fellow citizens.

Even now, nobody stages Peri’s operas. His operatic style is looked upon as some kind of musical curiosity. However we are all indebted to him, because his influence on young Baroque composers was immense and, after all, he was the inventor of the opera.