16th-Century Polyphony Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Authors such as Knud Jeppesen, with his work on Palestrina (The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance), and Harold K. Andrews (The Technique of Byrd’s Vocal Polyphony) have proposed taxonomies for Renaissance music, based primarily on dissonance treatment. However, there has been much less discussion in the literature of formal issues in Renaissance music: which types of musical material characterize openings, and which suggest development or continuation. This approach recalls William Caplin’s analytic method in Classical Form, in which he shows how each small musical unit has a particular formal function in creating the overall shape of a composition.

Peter N. Schubert’s work in this area, in his article “A Lesson from Lassus: Form in the Duos of 1577,” and his text, Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style, is a point of departure for the current study. In his text, Schubert identifies “presentation types,” brief imitative or non-imitative musical units that characterize openings, loosely analogous to Caplin’s “basic idea.” In Schubert’s article, he describes how Renaissance composers employed varied repetition of these openings to create longer formal units. Similarly, Jessie Ann Owens, in Composers at Work, has noted how Renaissance composers design short, multi-voiced “modules,” around which they construct longer formal units (such “modules” recall Joseph Kerman’s notion of “cell technique,” first expounded in “Old and New in Byrd’s Cantiones Sacrae”). These authors proceed from the assumption that Renaissance composers did indeed concern themselves with form, insofar as they strove toward designing long, musically unified sections from a brief opening idea.

Schubert’s work focuses on presentation types that are possible in a thin texture, namely, the imitative duo and the non-imitative module. Schubert also discusses imitative presentation in three or more voices, which he defines as a canon (an imitative duo with extra voices added at a consistent time interval of imitation). However, Schubert domits certain other possibilities in three or more voices, in which characteristics of the imitative module and non-imitative duo are blended into a hybrid presentation type. This paper, extending Schubert’s principles, proposes additional presentation types with which Byrd can begin a formal unit. These types, beginning with Schubert’s original three (imitative duo, non-imitative module and canon), will be examined, starting with presentation types in two voices, and proceeding through more intricate types in three and four voices. To list two of many possible hybrids that blend features of Schubert’s three presentation types: in a three-voice texture, two of the voices could form an imitative duo while a third voice provides homophonic support (semi-imitative presentation). Similarly, in four voices, a supporting part could underpin a three-voice canon (accompanied canon).

After introducing these presentation types, I will demonstrate how William Byrd distinguishes between opening gestures of varying musical weight and formal location in a composition by the kind of presentation type he uses to begin a formal unit. Byrd uses a limited number of presentation types at the beginning of a composition, but permits a wider range of initiating possibilities later in a work. Still other presentation types are unlikely to occur as beginnings at all, but rather arise from later variation and development of material whose initial presentation had been straightforward.

A feature of hybrid presentation types that is significant for their formal shape is their tendency to combine elements of presentation with elements of development. For example, a three-voice canon could combine the presentation of an imitative duo (formed by the first two entries) with its immediate transposed repetition (created by the second and third entries). This blending of beginning and middle (development) characteristics is a unique feature of Renaissance style that makes problematic the establishment of fixed categories of presentation and continuation, a problem that less often arises in post-Renaissance music. In Byrd’s music, and by extension, that of his contemporaries, the musical surface demands a more flexible approach in determining points of demarcation between formal building blocks: often, the opening presentational unit will blend imperceptibly with its subsequent continuation.

Finally, I will show how the developmental procedures inherent in hybrid presentation types points toward certain variation techniques (transposition, invertible counterpoint, textural thickening) that Byrd employs to develop his musical ideas. Using examples from Byrd’s three sets of Cantiones Sacrae (published 1575, 1589 and 1591), I will illustrate how a Renaissance composer can vary and expand initiating units to create a long span of musical material. I will furthermore show how this progression of material divides into presentation, continuation and conclusion units, based on the contrapuntal techniques that the composer uses in each of these three formal locations.