Music in Europe at The Time of The Renaissance

Jérôme Lejeune continues his History of Music series with this boxed set devoted to the Renaissance. The next volume in the series after Flemish Polyphony (RIC 102), this set explores the music of the 16th century from Josquin Desprez to Roland de Lassus. After all of the various turnings that music took during the Middle Ages, the music of the Renaissance seems to be a first step towards a common European musical style. Josquin Desprez’s example was followed by every composer in every part of Europe and in every musical genre, including the Mass setting, the motet and all of the various new types of solo song. Instrumental music was also to develop considerably from the beginning of the 16th century onwards.

Legends, magic, love and torments in music at the time of the „Tale of tales“. In 1643, in Naples, the probably most important collection of stories and folk tales of all times has been published: the „Pentamerone“ (the five-days-work) or „lo cunto de li cunti“ (the tale of tales) by Giambattista Basile. During five days each day ten tales are told. Basile with this work brought to live the genre of the Fairy Tale wich later on, adopted by the Grimm brothers, Perraut and Brentano, will spread like a wildfire all over Europe.

Jordi Savall is among the leading instrumentalists and conductors of the European early music scene, specializing in Renaissance, Baroque, and Medieval music. He took an interest in early music, and began learning the viola da gamba. He studied the gamba and early music research and practice with Wieland Kuijken in Brussels and August Wenzinger at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. In 1968, Savall married the soprano Montserrat Figueras, who shared his interest in early music. With Figueras and other musicians interested in early Spanish music, he founded the ensemble Hespèrion XX in 1974. The ensemble took its name from an ancient name for the Western European region from Italy to Iberia. At the turn of the 21st century, the group changed its name to Hespèrion XXI.

Solo lute music flourished in large parts of Europe in the first half of the 16th century. In Italy, its most important early exponents were Francesco Spinacino, Joanambrosio Dalza, Vincenzo Capirola and Francesco da Milano. The leading lutenists in France were Albert de Rippe and Guillaume Morlaye. Germanys composers of unaccompanied lute music were Hans Judenkünig, Hans Newsiedler and Hans Gerle. The second half of the century brought new composers to the fore: in Italy, Vincenzo Galilei, Giovanni Antonio Terzi and Simone Molinaro; in Germany, Hans Newsiedlers son Melchior above all.

The successor to Music in Europe at the time of the Renaissance, this second volume in our History of Early Music is devoted to the music of the first part of the Baroque period in Italy, from the Florentine Camerata and the first operas to the heirs of Monteverdi; it was at that time that the freedom of structure characteristic of the beginning of the 17th century began to give way to the first traces of formalism. This period covers almost an entire century, beginning with the performances of La Pellegrina mounted in Florence in 1589 and ending with the final operas of Francesco Cavalli in the early 1670s. The sacred and the profane mingled and met during this period, which also saw the birth of accompanied monody, opera and oratorio, virtuoso performance and the sonata; it is precisely this same mix that we see in the Nativity by Caravaggio that appears on the cover of this set. The musical expression of this Baroque aesthetic is the subject of Jérome Lejeune’s accompanying dissertation.

The Cistercian order was born at the end of the 11th century around the new monastery of Cîteaux and developed by Bernard of Clairvaux in the following years. Their aim was to return to the basics of the austere Benedictine rule, as opposed to the less stricter developments that had taken place around Cluny. These ideas quickly spread around Europe, producing great architecture and great liturgical music, devoid of embellishments and flourishments then considered unnecessary. Sabine Lutzenberger and her Ensemble PER-SONAT presents the sounds of Cistercian monasteries all around Europe.

“But remember that song is a most powerful imitator of all things. It imitates the intentions and passions of the soul as well as words…By the same power, when it imitates the celestials, it also wonderfully arouses our spirit upwards to the celestial influence and the celestial influence downwards to our spirit.” Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life (1489), Book 3, Chapter XXI