I confess joy

by Petar PLAMENOV


19 March (Saturday), 20:00
Musica Mundana & Humana
Saint Jozeph Cathedral
Address:
Sofia, 146 Kniaz Boris I Str.
Free entrance

Cast: Boryana Naidenova, Miglena Pavlova, Ivailo Donkov, Yanko Marinov, Yavor Genov, Emil Mihov, Ana Ivanova, Katya Vuleva

In the program: Josquin des Prez, Guillaume Dufay, John Dunstaple

 This group of young musicians will offer a program of music by Josquin des Prez. The program will focus on both sacred and secular works for five and six voices, mostly composed during the final two decades of the composer’s life and his crowning achievement. Among the pieces are the beautiful Marian motets Ave nobilissima creatura and Benedicta es caelorum regina, the clever Petite Camusette and ever-popular Faulte d’argent, and the dark brooding De profundis and Pater noster/Ave Maria. 

Josquin Desprez (c.1440/55-1521) is widely regarded as one of the finest and most influential composers in the history of Western music. The stylistic traits of his music, both in contrapuntal technique and in text-setting, gave the defining direction to the High Renaissance and with it the course of music history as a whole. Not only was Josquin admired by Martin Luther as the greatest of composers, but his music was distributed throughout Europe and especially in Germany for decades after his death. The clear textures and text declamation which Josquin employed set the stage not only for the next developments of technical harmony, but for the clarity and conciseness demanded by the Counter-Reformation of Palestrina et al. as well. Josquin's output displays a rare combination of innovation and accomplished technical mastery, and has retained for him a position as the most prominent composer of the early sixteenth century, perhaps the high point of Western music as a whole.

Guillaume Dufay (1399-1474) was a Dutch composer, who started a new generation in music. Dufay was not only a musician, but he also taught famous composers how to work with instruments and other music related things. One of Dufay's most famous breakthroughs was to write music for instruments and not just for singing. Some of these instruments included the lute, spinetto, viol, virginal, recorder and lira de braccio. Even today these instruments have been modified into newer versions like the piano, clarinet, oboe, harpsicord, modern day recorder as well as guitars. Another one of his accomplishments was the change of chants to harmonies, which made the music flow more smoothly than the complex rhythmic textures of the late Medieval Period. The impact of Guillaume Dufay's music changed music forever and also inspired more people to write music since his time.

John Dunstaple (c.1390-1453), once more often spelled Dunstable, was one of the most influential composers of the early fifteenth century. Dunstaple's persona took on such a mythological character among later authors that it is this awe which is most discernible today, rather than any underlying facts. Indeed, few details of his life are known, and much of his most significant music is not securely attributed. Based on comments from Tinctoris and other contemporary authors, Dunstaple was mistakenly believed by later Renaissance writers to have invented counterpoint! Although these fanciful aspects of his reputation can be received with some humor today, Dunstaple was certainly one of the leading English composers of his day, and one of those principally responsible for inspiring the integration of the "English Countenance" style into pan-European contrapuntal technique. That style is based on a relative abundance of thirds, or what we might call sonorities anticipating major tonality, in the descant writing then current in England.

Composers in the Renaissance were idealized as geniuses.   Countries created some of the first academies and universities to train young musicians.  The developments shaped during these ages shaped what we today call, music theory.  The dark ages changed much of the thinking of the Renaissance.  The sudden change in climate reversed what made the High Middle Ages great.  The plague ravaged Europe.  Devout catholics were killed yet others live on.  Having most of your fellow man killed of can aid in losing faith from the church.  The plague destroyed feudalism in Western Europe, thereby changing politics, and giving power to the serfs.  The church’s influence was waning, leaving kings, nobles and serfs struggling for power.  When a terrible, society crushing event passes, people just want to move on.  The plague was over, and the Renaissance was born.  

Composers from the Renaissance mostly came from the same place in northern France.  Burgandy would supplied Europe with the most famous composers including John Dunstable, Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnois and Josquin des Prez.  The Renaissance altered the thought that musicians were tradesmen.  This, however, doesn’t mean that musicians led an easier life than before.  “The musician had no more opportunity and no wider possibility of advancing himself than had the minstrels of preceding centuries.” wrote the great musicologist Romain Goldron. Only a few rare musicians got rich by playing.  The only way would be to get an exclusive job playing for a high nobleman or king.

The Renaissance had three characteristics that were change from earlier times: humanism, individualism and secularism.  “The desire to write a kind of music inspired by words…. marks the influence of the humanists" wrote Goldron. Prior to the Renaissance anonymity was frequently used.  The rebirth gave artists a sense of pride and they wanted their name on great works of art.  Also, before the Renaissance, “as a general rule, every musician was a church musician”.  The Renaissance introduced a distinction between church musicians and musicians that wrote secular songs.  This, again was influenced by the humanist movement.
 

 

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