In a corner of the Cloisters Museum in New York, there’s a small triptych showing the angel announcing the birth of Christ to Mary. The most striking features of the Merode Altarpiece, from the 1420’s, are its light, airy color palette, its rich network of religious symbols, and its complexity — the whole foreground, for instance, is made up of intricate garment folds.
The overwhelming color in Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s 1608 Annunciation, on the other hand, is black, and the focus is on a single gesture. At the center of the painting, the angel’s small, white index finger curls mysteriously out of the black over Mary’s head. It is tense and dramatic, and that drama is perfectly intelligible to modern eyes.
Renaissance vocal music also witnessed this kind of evolution from medieval sensibilities toward increasingly contemporary forms of drama and expression. The music of the early Renaissance can be alluringly complex but remote from contemporary taste, while the music of the 16th century speaks more and more to modern understandings of musical emotion.
Take for instance, the “Gloria” from Johannes Ockhegem’s 15th-century Missa Prolationum, famously based on an elaborate music-theoretical concept (the mensuration canon), and compare it to the “Gloria” of Josquin des Prez’s Pange Lingua Mass (1515). Where Ockeghem’s piece is the restrained, esoteric work of a disciplined musical mind, Josquin’s work can readily dazzle contemporary hearers with its limpid melodies, an assortment of effects that clearly dramatize the text (see, for example, the setting of the line “suscipe deprecationem nostram” about ¾ of the way through), and a totally thrilling conclusion.
There is in fact, a whole universe of different affects in the music of this period; irreverent humor (Lassus’ “Quant mon mary vient de dehors”), poetic eros (Arcadelt, “Il bianco e dolce cigno”), onomatopoetic play (Janequin’s “La Bataille”), and religious feelings ranging from the totally sober (Palestrina) to the totally lavish (Gabrieli). And there is a range and diversity of contemporary performing styles, too, ranging from the studious (The King’s Singers) to the outrageous (Ensemble Clément Janequin). This guide aims to offer a window into this dynamic and diverse period of musical evolution, and the equally dynamic and diverse ways in which performers have aimed to bring it to life.