Music of the Renaissance - a sampler

From roughly 1400 to 1600 Europe went through the Renaissance (to remember the dates think Columbus in 1492 and add and subtract 100). When it began, man didn’t have printing, mass produced books, realistic painting, diplomacy, theatre, the scientific method, accounting, fashion, or much knowledge about the culture of Greece and Rome.  By its end we had all that and more and were at heights never again attained in all the major and minor arts including architecture, painting, sculpture, jewelry, and furniture. Renaissance leaders labeled the era before theirs the “dark ages” and systematically resurrected long abandoned Greek and Roman culture from 2000 years before to consciously create modern man. The playlist below contains music from fifteen albums of renaissance music - all from great sounding recordings -

usually one piece per album.

Music-wise the Renaissance was the transition between medieval music and Bach and produced over 500 composers, and most are unfamiliar. Renaissance music always sounds like it is from an earlier, simpler, innocent time, and throughout the period there was a high value placed on doing everything very beautifully. This music is somewhat harder to get acquainted with than later classical music because the composers, titles and types of individual pieces of music are unfamiliar or often in Latin or Italian, and performers, ensembles and record labels are generally unknown and numerous.

The shrinkage in size of liner notes from records to CD’s and now their virtual elimination on Internet music sites has been hard on all classical music but even worse for this and earlier music. The earlier you go the less helpful the whole corpus of music reviews and music catalogs are in finding good sounding music, although there is certainly infinitely more to listen through if you have the time. The way the great body of “classical music” is organized in stores and on the internet with CD guides and reviews and music organized into categories of symphonies, chamber music etc. works OK for the three musical eras that followed this era (represented respectively by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven but not as well for the Renaissance and it is even worse before the Renaissance when composers didn’t usually sign their compositions and most music has no “composer”. Here is a link to the Top 500 Renaissance composers  500.

Can we talk?
Much Renaissance music is religious and frankly boring, but here and there are real gems. No one seems to have put together a “best of” list. Over the years I picked up hundreds of albums of renaissance, Medieval and early music and I noted on the cover the compositions I particularly liked. Actually, the  “important” composers of the Renaissance aren’t necessarily the ones that are most listenable to me.

The twit’s left off Dunstable!
Yes, I have not included any pieces by John Dunstable or as he is often called "Dunstaple", but he was more or less the first composer of this era and his music is very nice so if you want to have your house sound like a great cathedral full of ethereal voices. Alas I haven't found any particular pieces of his that really knock me out and those are all I ever put on playlists. He wrote religious music (at least that is all we have surviving of his work) and was the first to set masses to a single melody.

Cries of London
An interesting insight into London circa 1600 at the very end of the Renaissance is a song made up entirely of the cries of food and other street venders and hawkers. It was fashionable in those days to set their cries to music and the 6 CD set from which this is taken has one whole CD of them.  The singer is Alfred Deller a contra-tenor who is one of the best singers of Renaissance songs. He has a very high voice like a woman soprano although he is a big man with a beard. Weelkes, the composer wrote religious works but frequently got in trouble for being drunk in church, blaspheming and swearing during services. Parts of it may be hard to follow so the text is here. (Of Weelkes his bishop once said of him:)



Dyvers tymes & very often come so disguised eyther from the Taverne or Ale house into the quire as is muche to be lamented, for in these humoures he will bothe curse & sweare most dreadfully, & so profane the service of God … and though he hath bene often tymes admonished … to refrayne theis humors and reforme hym selfe, yett he daylye continuse the same, & is rather worse than better therein. 


The best kept secret of the renaissance. 
After the Renaissance ended we returned to the dark ages and there we remain.  To get civilization back on track "going forward", we need to do it the way they did and teach Latin and Greek in all our schools - in the classroom, as in life, the hard way is the best way.