Knowledge is a funny old thing. Once you learn about a subject you forget there was a time when you lacked this knowledge. Equally, it’s all too easy to remain unaware of the things you don’t yet know!
Through my work with adult recorder players I encounter amateur musicians from all walks of life, many of whom are very knowledgeable about a myriad of subjects. Over the years they’ve picked up snippets of useful information about the music they play, but this knowledge is often peppered with holes. Whereas children have no fear of asking questions, adults will often hold back for fear of looking foolish, even if this might help fill some gaps in their understanding. The irony is, other people in the room will almost certainly also be thinking, “I wonder what X, Y or Z means” but will also be too afraid to ask the question!
A recent conversation with an adult pupil made me think about all the little pieces of information which are handy to know when tackling Renaissance music. I’m as guilty as any teacher of sometimes assuming a level of knowledge among those I work with, forgetting to mention details which seem obvious to me. Today’s blog post is my attempt to help you fill in some of these blanks in your knowledge. If even just one of the things I cover here brings you an ‘aha’ moment, it will have been worth it!
To illustrate the subject, my examples come from the Victoria Motet I recorded and shared a few weeks ago, but all of the topics here are applicable to other pieces of Renaissance music. When you’ve finished reading, why not dig out another piece from the period and see which of them you find there?
Let’s begin with the basics….
What is Renaissance music?
Fundamentally, it’s music composed between roughly 1400 and 1600. The transition between musical styles is never an overnight change, but a gradual shift. There were composers at either end of the Renaissance who were either still composing old fashioned music, which owed more to the medieval period, or forward thinkers, leaning towards the Baroque style before it became mainstream. If I mention the names Gabrieli, Palestrina, Lassus, Tallis and Byrd I’m sure you’ll all be nodding in recognition, having played music by at least one of them.
For the purposes of this blog post I’ll help you understand the notation in modern editions of Renaissance music. Learning to play from facsimiles of old manuscripts can be fascinating, as it reveals the sort of notation Renaissance composers would have been familiar with. If I were to cover that here too though we’d be looking at an article of epic proportions. Instead I’ll limit the scope to modern editions of the sort offered by publishing houses like London Pro Musica and many others.
An example of Byrd’s music in its original published notation
What’s in a name?
These days the voices in a piece of recorder music are generally labelled with instrument names – for instance tenor recorder, great bass recorder etc. This is because most music from the Baroque period onwards was composed with a specific instrumentation in mind. Previously this was a more flexible concept. For instance a Renaissance canzon could be played by a variety of different consorts - viols, recorders, cornetts and sackbuts or even a mixture of these. As a result composers tended to use a more general naming procedure. For instance, you might have a four voice piece with parts labelled Cantus, Altus, Tenor and Bassus. In recorder terms this would almost certainly fit a classic quartet set up of descant, treble, tenor and bass recorders.
So what if a Renaissance composer wanted to write a five part piece? Easy – you add a fifth part and call it Quintus! Likewise, a sixth voice will often be labelled Sextus. Logically you might assume these parts would be added at the bottom of the score, but that would be too simple. Instead, composers simply inserted the additional voices where they thought they fitted best. In this Victoria Motet the Quintus part is the second line in the score, but in Anthony Holborne’s dances it’s the third line. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter – the crucial thing is to ensure you have the right size of recorder playing each line.
Before we consider who plays what, let’s now take a look at the information which often appears at the beginning of a score, as that contains some useful clues.
Be a musical detective
Given that part names don’t necessarily tell you which instrument you should play, you sometimes need to play detective to figure things out. There are two important pieces of information to consider here – clefs and instrument ranges.
If you look at a modern recorder quartet score (SATB) you’ll notice the clefs in the descant and bass parts have a small 8 above them. This means these instruments sound an octave higher than the printed pitch of the music. Treble and tenor recorders play at the printed pitch, so what you see is what you hear. If you check the clefs in the Victoria, the top and bottom lines lack these little 8s but instead they appear beneath the clefs of the Altus and Tenor lines – indicating the music here sounds an octave lower than printed. Don’t fret about this, but bear it in mind once you’ve followed the next clue.
The opening of the Victoria Motet, showing clefs, the pitch range of each part and the time signature
Now take a look at the two notes shown before the time signature – these show the lowest and highest pitches played by each voice. These give a big clue as to which instrument you’ll need to pick up. The Cantus line shows a range from the A below the stave, to the D a little over an octave higher. At first glance this range won’t fit on a descant or treble recorder, but don’t let that put you off! Now consider these notes an octave higher and you’ll find they fit perfectly on a treble recorder – low A to high D. If you do the same with the Quintus part you’ll find it also fits the range of a treble recorder. Looking now at the range of the Altus and Tenor parts, they fit the tenor recorder like a glove. The clef for these lines indicates the music should sound an octave lower than printed, but by using a tenor recorder you’ll negate the 8 symbol and, like the treble parts, you’ll be playing them an octave higher. Finally, the Bassus part fits the range of a bass recorder perfectly and the notes automatically sound an octave higher than notated.
When you pick a new piece of Renaissance music, take each voice, look at the range of notes and ask yourself which recorder best fits this range. Sometimes there may be a choice of two instruments which could work – for instance, descant or treble. In this situation you just need to decide whether the part would be more comfortable played low down on a descant or higher in the range of a treble – often there’s no absolute right answer here.
Before I move on, it’s worth noting that the lines best played on a treble recorder in Renaissance scores, like this one, will need to be played an octave higher than written. Sometimes the editor will be kind and provide separate parts which are written out at the correct playing pitch - as is the case with the Victoria. Not all editors are this helpful though, so it’s worth practising this skill ready for the occasion when you have to do it at sight in a rehearsal. I know many players find octave reading challenging, so it’s a technique I will return to in a future Score Lines blog post.
It begins like this….
The Latin word Incipit means ‘it begins’ and it also happens to be the name used for the information often shown at the start of a modern Renaissance edition. This gives a little glimpse of the notation the editor transcribed from the original source, be it the composer’s manuscript or a published edition from the period.
Take a look at the incipit from the Victoria and you’ll see the following pieces of information, from left to right:
The Incipit from our Victoria Motet
The original part names. Sometimes an editor will modernise these – here they’ve been retained unchanged.
The original clefs. Renaissance musicians must have been adept at playing from multiple C, G and F clefs. Today recorder players are most at home in treble and bass clefs, so editors will usually change these to suit our needs.
The original key signature. In the case of the Victoria, the piece was composed in one flat and the editor has transposed the pitch of the piece a fourth lower. Renaissance music will often transfer easily to recorders, but in some cases the music fits the instruments better when transposed up or down to a different pitch.
The composer’s time signature or mensuration sign – I’ll explain more about this momentarily.
The first few notes or rests of each part.
These pieces of information won’t always impact the way you play the music, but it’s interesting to see how the composer started the piece and to have a glimpse of Renaissance notational styles.
What pulse should I feel?
In modern music the time signature gives us a very clear idea of the rhythmic patterns within. The top number of a time signature tells us the number of beats in each bar, while the lower one indicates the type of beats (4 for crotchets, 8 for quavers, etc). Sometimes the letter C is used instead of a pair of numbers and I’ll explain why in a moment. Of course, it wasn’t until the mid-16th century that composers began to use bar lines and it wasn’t until the mid-17th century that our modern concept of barlines and time signatures became the norm.
Prior to the use of time signatures, composers included a mensuration sign, which indicated the underlying rhythmic patterns of the music, leaving performers to read the notes and figure out the shapes for themselves without the assistance of barlines. Modern editors often lend us a helping hand by converting this to a time signature and adding barlines to the music. These are a great crutch for those getting started with Renaissance music, but barlines often influence the way we play the music as we apply our modern concept of the first beat of each bar being the strongest. Playing from unbarred music can be strangely freeing, allowing you to judge the rhythmic patterns for what they are, without the constraint of barlines.
Many musicians are unaware of the direct connection between the old mensuration signs and modern time signatures so let’s take a look at that now.
The purpose of a mensuration sign was to help the performer understand whether the music was predominantly in two, three or four time. Music in three time was indicated by way of a circle, known as tempus perfectus - a reflection of the perfect Holy Trinity.
Music in four time was known as tempus imperfectus, and the simplest way of showing this was by way of an imperfect circle – one with a bit missing. Take a small chunk out of a circle and you’re left with a letter C – the symbol we still use today for common or four time! So how to show two time? Simple – cut your C in half with a vertical line and you have the symbol we use today for cut-common, or 2/2 time.
Our Victoria Motet has four minim beats in each bar, despite a time signature apparently indicating two….
Now let’s take another look at the Victoria. The time signature is what we, as modern musicians, would consider to be 2/2 time. Look closer though and you’ll find four minims in each bar - not what we expect. Renaissance music is generally notated in very white notation – mostly minims and semibreves with very few black notes, such as crotchets and quavers. Once you bear this in mind, it then becomes evident that the time signature simply indicates two beats rather than two minims – on this occasion it’s actually two semibreve beats per bar. Of course, if you choose to continue feeling a minim pulse while playing you’re entirely at liberty to do so!
Notes and rests
Before I close, it’s perhaps also worth mentioning a few of the less frequently seen note and rest values which appear in Renaissance music.
Most recorder players are familiar with minim and semibreve notes and rests but if your comfort zone is the Baroque or beyond may not have encountered breves. A breve is twice as long as a semibreve (which literally means half a breve) and in most modern editions is indicated with a squarish shaped note. The equivalent length rest fills the space between two of the stave lines – as you can see in the first bar of the lower part in this example.
Minim, semibreve and breve rest symbols
A much less common note value in modern music is the longa, which appears as a breve with a stem. In Renaissance notation this can last twice or three times as long as a breve, depending on the prevailing pulse and pattern of beats. In practice, more often than not a longa will appear at the end of a piece (as it does in the last bar of the Victoria below) so it simply becomes a long note – the Renaissance equivalent of a pause, if you like.
The longa appears as a breve with a tail
What else would you like to know?
While this is by no means an exhaustive guide to Renaissance music and its notation, I hope it has perhaps answered some of your questions. Hopefully you’ll now be able to tackle new pieces with more confidence, selecting the right instruments for each voice and knowing how to interpret the time signatures and note lengths.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. Next time you’re uncertain about some aspect of the music in a rehearsal, be brave and ask your question – you can be sure there’ll be someone else in the room who’ll be really grateful you piped up because they’re wondering about the same thing! In the meantime, I’d love to try and help you straight away, so do leave a comment below with your queries and I’ll do my best to have an answer for you. Just remember, no one knows absolutely everything about music, so look upon anything you don’t know as an opportunity to learn!
Looking for the latest in my Recorder Consort Music Downloads? Click here and you’ll find this week’s music and video - a quartet ‘minus one’ version of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sonata in F for three treble recorders and continuo.