The golden age of vocal polyphony

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe rediscovered the texts of Antiquity, invented printing, explored the world and placed human beings at the centre of its concerns: this is the Renaissance. In music, the period was above all the golden age of voices. Choirs of a few singers, often without instruments, produced polyphony of a sweetness and balance never heard before.

A sweeter sound

In the early 15th century, English musicians such as John Dunstable made fashionable a rounder sound, rich in thirds and sixths, which musicians on the Continent admired and imitated. The "open" fifths of the Middle Ages gave way to full chords, close to our major and minor triads. Guillaume Du Fay, who worked notably in Cambrai, was one of the first great masters of this new style.

The Franco-Flemish: musicians on the move

For more than a century, the most sought-after musicians in Europe came from northern France and the old Low Countries (Flanders, Hainaut, Brabant). Trained in cathedral choir schools, they went off to serve popes, the dukes of Milan or Ferrara, the kings of France. The most famous is Josquin des Prez (c. 1450–1521): his contemporaries regarded him as the greatest musician of his time, and his works were so much in demand that publishers even attributed to him pieces he had not written.

Their art rests on imitation: one voice launches a short motif, a second takes it up a little later, then a third, a fourth… All voices are equally important; none is mere accompaniment. The result is a woven, continuous texture in which you follow one line, then another.

Printed music

In 1501 in Venice, Ottaviano Petrucci published the Odhecaton, the first collection of polyphonic music printed with movable type. A few decades later, Pierre Attaingnant in Paris perfected a simpler process that printed notes and staff in a single impression. Music became a commodity: people bought books of songs, Masses and dances; amateurs sang and played at home, and a composer's works travelled all over Europe.

Reformation and Counter-Reformation

In the 16th century the Western Church split apart, and music was at the heart of the debate.

• Martin Luther, himself a musician, wanted the faithful to sing together in their own language. He wrote and adapted hymns in German with simple melodies: the chorales, such as Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott ("A mighty fortress is our God"). Two centuries later, Bach would harmonise them by the hundred.
• John Calvin, in Geneva, allowed only the singing of psalms in church, in French, in unison and without instruments. The Genevan Psalter gathered these melodies; several are by the musician Louis Bourgeois.
• The Catholic Church, at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), worried about polyphony so complex that the words could no longer be understood. A stubborn legend claims that Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass "saved" polyphony by proving it could be written clearly and intelligibly. The story is embellished, but it is right on one point: clarity of the text became a requirement.

Here is the opening of a Genevan Psalter melody attributed to Louis Bourgeois, published in 1551, which English speakers still sing as the Old Hundredth (for Psalm 100). Notice the simplicity: almost one note per syllable, long and short values, a tune a whole congregation can sing.

M:2/2
L:1/4
Q:1/2=56
K:G
G2 GF | ED G2 | A2 B2 | B2 BB | AG c2 | B2 A2 | G4 |]

Three great names at the end of the century

• Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–1594), in Rome: supple vocal lines, carefully prepared dissonances, a serenity that became the model for teaching counterpoint for centuries.
• Orlande de Lassus (1532–1594), a Franco-Fleming settled at the Munich court: one of the most prolific composers in history, at home in Latin, French, Italian and German, from the sacred to the downright comic.
• Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548–1611), from Spain: intense, fervent sacred music.

In England, Thomas Tallis wrote Spem in alium, a motet in forty real parts, and his younger colleague William Byrd, a Catholic in an England that had become Protestant, composed both for the Anglican Church and for Masses celebrated in secret.

What to listen for

• Equal voices (often four to six) entering one after another in imitation.
• A soft, full sound, rich in thirds and sixths; dissonances are brief and quickly resolved.
• A continuous flow, without a strongly marked dance pulse, in which phrases overlap.
• Few or no instruments in church music: the ideal is the choir a cappella ("as in the chapel").

Listen

• Josquin des Prez: the motet Ave Maria… virgo serena.
• Palestrina: the Pope Marcellus Mass.
• Thomas Tallis: Spem in alium.
• A Lutheran chorale, for example Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, then Bach's harmonisation of it.