HUMS 3102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: John Dunstaple, Epideictic, Motet
7 Sep 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
• Return of mimesis
• Return of classical rhetoric/classical knowledge
• Time frame
o The intellectual and artistic activity began in Italy around 1350 and spread to
nortern Europe
o Musical developments did not begin until around 1475
• Term means rebirth, reawakening
o Renaissance thinkers derived inspiration from the cultural heritage of ancient
Greece and Rome
o Valued personal achievement, intellectual independence and discovery
• Humanism
o A philosophical perspective markedly different from the Medieval period
o Emphasis on human worth, creativity, and the capacity o shape society
o Rhetoric (judicial, deliberative, epideictic) deeply informs the arts
• Musical style
o Melody
• Stepwise - conjunct motion within a moderately narrow range
• Mostly diatonic but some chromaticism used in madrigals
o Harmony
• Not as much dissonance as in medieval music
• The consonant triad (concentus) becomes the basic building block of
harmony
o Rhythm
• Duple meter now as common as triple meter
• Rhythm in a sacred music is relaxed and without strong downbeats
• Rhythm in secular music - vocal and instrumental - islively, with frequent
use of syncopation
• Ren - natural outgrowth
• Very specific - write idiomatic music - music for the lute and other instruments
• Start thinking about instrumentation
o Colour
• More instrumental music has survived than from the Middle Ages
• Unaccompanied vocal music remains the predominant sound
o Texture
• Polyphonic texture for four or five vocal lines is standard
• Imitative counterpoint predominates
• Passages of chordal homophonic texture are inserted for variety
• W/T 21: "Fount and Origin"
o John Dunstable, Came to France after Battle of Agincourt (1415); Secretary to
Duke of Bedford 9Regent of France)
o "Contenance Anglois"
o Faburden-Fauxbourdon
o Quan Pulcha Es (youtube.com/watch?v=qQjdEbZH3wl)
• Motet
o Composition for a choir
o Latin text on a sacred subject
