Learning Objectives

• Recognize the differences between the Medieval and Renaissance periods in terms of society, religion, art, science, and freedom.
• Explain how Renaissance musicians made their living.
• Use relevant musical vocabulary to analyze Renaissance a cappella singing.
• Distinguish the characteristics of Renaissance music, and differentiate between Renaissance music and Medieval music.
• Illustrate how composers used the motet, a sacred genre with a Latin devotional text, to experiment in musical style and texture.
• Describe how Renaissance composers set texts from the Ordinary of the Mass for their polyphonic Masses.
• Describe how instrumental dance music was performed by professional and amateur musicians.

Renaissance Period (1450–1600)

Listening Bridge

Listen to these two Kyries from the Mass and compare them, using the following questions as a guide:

• Are the melodies mostly stepwise, or do they contain many skips and leaps?
• Which has a more recognizable pulse?
• In which piece do the voices more frequently come together to form chords?
• In which piece do the voices sound more independent of one another, rhythmically and melodically?
• What factors do you think make Palestrina's Kyrie sound more modern to our ears and Machaut's sound older?