CHAPTER 6
1. Explain the impact of the Protestant Reformation on sacred music. What were the
underlying theological reasons that many reformers preferred congregational hymns and
chorales to complex polyphony?
The Protestant Reformation did much to weaken the professional and “perfected” sensibility of
sacred music. This was intentional: Lutheran chorales, for instance, with their workmanlike
quality and accessible basis (popular song, often enough), were a simple and effective means of
uniting a congregation that was without hierarchy and almost entirely lay.
2. What features characterized the music of the Counter-Reformation in the decades
following the Council of Trent? Considering the events discussed in this chapter and in
Chapter 5, describe how the history of music was shaped by the religious divisions of the
sixteenth century.
The music of the Counter-Reformation was remarkably sensuous and intense, eschewing the
exalted sensibilities of the ars perfecta in favor of the grandeur and immensity usually reserved
for divine revelation.
Religious division had an incalculable impact upon the music of the sixteenth century. The
Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and growing Humanist movement all sought to achieve an
aesthetic expression of their theological ideals, and music proved one of the most effective
outlets for this desire.
3. Contrast Gabrieli’s In ecclesiis with a typical work in the ars perfecta style, such as
Josquin’s Ave Maria . . . virgo serena (Chapter 5). How does Gabrieli’s work differ from
these works in terms of musical conception, instrumentation, compositional technique, and
demands made on performers?
Gabrieli’s In ecclesiis is far removed from the ars perfecta in many respects. The work is almost
entirely absent of the imitation so endemic to the ars perfecta works previously discussed.
Instead, it employs the opposite effects of stark contrast and call-and-response, and it employs an
almost ritornello-like form to lend cohesion to the work as a whole. The ensemble required of
Gabrieli’s work represents another break from the ars perfecta: In ecclesiis specifically calls for
the use of an instrumental body which acts as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, the
vocal lines.
4. Discuss music publishing and the resulting consumer culture of music. Who were the
primary musical publishers in the sixteenth century? How did they impact the production
and consumption of music?
The primary music publishers of the early sixteenth century were Ottaviano Petrucci and Andrea
Antico, a Venetian and a Roman, respectively. Their method of printing was a three-part process
which individually set the staff, notes, and text. This method was eventually superseded by the
less expensive (if less prestigious) method of the French printer Pierre Attaingnant in the mid1520s, who used a single-press method to save time and labor.
The printing industry contributed directly to a surging popularity of the “lower” genres such as
the frottola, a song which had been previously hampered by its lowly origins. With the opening
of a larger, less aristocratic audience, the frottola (and many another popular genre) could assert
itself more fully.
5. Describe the new genres of popular music in Italy and France during the sixteenth
century. What are their salient traits, and how are they reflected in the works of Marco
Cara, Claudin de Sermisy, and Clément Janequin?
The Italian frottola of the sixteenth century was a kind of model for music-making, most often a
lightweight formulaic composition to which many different texts could be set. Cara’s Mal un
muta per effecto is optimally composed as a setting for an eight-syllable poetic pattern, the
ottonario, then popular in Italy. In France, the chanson was the most noteworthy of the new
popular genres. In the hands of de Sermisy, the chanson strongly resembled its Italian kin, the
frottola, but took on an entirely different, almost Rabelaisian tone when employed by Janequin,
whose imitative, nigh-comic chansons such as La guerre draw heavily on onomatopoeia.
6. In what ways was Lasso a cosmopolitan composer? How is this reflected in the different
types of music he composed?
Lasso was an Italian-educated Netherlander who spoke French and found most of his
employment in Germany—as great an example of cosmopolitanism as there might be in music.
This can be seen in his huge and variegated output. He produced ars perfecta-tinged chansons in
French (Je l’ayme bien), comedically lowbrow villanelles in Italian (Matona mia cara), mockmotets (Audite nova), and settings of mystical Latin texts of prophecy and revelation (Prophetiae
Sybillarum).
7. What was the Petrarchan movement? How is it tied to the origins of the madrigal?
The Petrarchan movement represented a resurrection of those genres tied to the great fourteenthcentury Humanist poet Petrarch, such as the madrigal. The madrigal, in its newly revived form,
is the predecessor of the form we are most familiar with today, and has little in common with the
trecento madrigal previously discussed. The new madrigal is a continuous form, in a manner
similar to through-composition, which allows for a closer setting of a constantly changing text.
8. What were the central features of the Italian madrigal? How do the works of Arcadelt
and Rore reflect new relationships between music and text?
The Italian madrigal is notable for its lack of a fixed form—tied to a poem of a single stanza with
lines of uncertain length, it avoided refrain and other overt forms of repetition. Madrigals
admitted special musical features when the text demanded them, and often used musical
materials to highlight the powerful antitheses often found in madrigal poems. Arcadelt’s Il
bianco e dolce cigno is typical of the genre, conforming strictly to the text whenever possible, as
in the chromatic harmony underlying the word piangendo or the use of repetition for special,
textual effect near its end. De Rore’s Da le belle contrade d’oriente employs a more radical
approach that is still true to the genre, using a realistic depiction of sobs and moaning to achieve
its heightened effect.
9. In what ways did the madrigals of Marenzio, Monteverdi, and Gesualdo violate the
norms of ars perfecta?
These madrigalists eschewed any notion of perfectability in music to more closely ally it with the
text, in what is today sometimes called “word painting.” To this end they could employ mimetic
techniques to grant vocalists more authentically grief-stricken lines, imbue their harmonies with
rich chromaticism, and treat dissonance in a free and expressive manner.
10. What criticisms were leveled against the new style by the critic Giovanni Maria Artusi?
How do Monteverdi and Artusi represent contrasting musical values, and how are similar
debates played out in our own time?
Artusi objected to a free and unprepared use of dissonance within Monteverdi’s madrigals,
singling out Cruda Amarilli as the most flagrant offender. Monteverdi’s tacit defense was that he
was merely doing justice to the text, an argument which Artusi would not recognize as valid.
This argument is still played out today by those who would divorce music from the obligations it
incurs when it is married to its sister arts.
11. How did the Italian madrigal change as it was imported into England?
The English, linguistically divorced from the literary weight of the Petrarchan revival, were more
apt to employ madrigals as light entertainment, and to revel in their exuberant and experimental
“madrigalisms” without granting the works the measure of austerity previous, non-English
composers had sought.