From the Renaissance to the Baroque

The 15^th-17^th centuries marked the period of the dawn of European vocal polyphony, when incredibly complex vocal counterpoint was to be heard not just in the context of the church but also in the homes of enlightened citizens.
One of the most famous maestri of the age was Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594) – the chorus master of St Peter’s Cathedral and the Sistine Chapel. It was from him that the Tridentum (Trento) Cathedral commissioned a trial mass which was to prove the possibility of the existence of polyphonic music within the framework of divine worship (it was considered that refined polyphonic technique damaged the clarity of prayer). Da Palestrina coped with the task brilliantly; even during his lifetime the composer had thirteen volumes of his masses published. The complexity of da Palestrina’s polyphonic technique remains intangible for audiences thanks to the clarity, harmony and melodious plasticity of its music. Many of the masses make use of the then widespread technique of parody or exact quotations from other people’s musical material. It is used in the mass Spem in alium (“Hope in Any Other Have I None”, 1570), based on the four-voice motet using the same text by Jacquet of Mantua (1539).
At the same time that da Palestrina’s mass was written, one of the most grandiose choral works of all times and peoples was composed in the British Isles - Thomas Tallis’ forty-voice motet Spem in alium. It would be more correct to call it a motet for eight five-voiced choruses. The motet makes use of not just imitation but of an antiphonal principle too, meaning an alternating sequence of the sounds of the choral groups, resulting in effects of echo and question-and-answer. In the final culmination all forty voices resound at the same time.
Da Palestrina also produced some three hundred religious motets, works in the refined and complex genre of vocal polyphonic music that emerged as far back as the 12^th century. One of the most important features of the first motets was their multi-textual nature – at one and the same time they included texts in different languages and with different content, both secular and spiritual.
Renaissance motets were written using just one literary source in Latin, although the practice of pronouncing the words at different times was retained. It was following this principle that da Palestrina constructed his motets Nunc dimittis and Dum complerentur, composed using texts from the Holy Scriptures.
In Germany during the Baroque era motets were vocal or vocal and instrumental works in a free polyphonic style set to a German text.
Bach’s eight motets are the culmination of the development of the genre. The brilliant use of polyphonic techniques allows us to refer to them as motet fugues. Such is the eight-voice funereal motet with basso continuo Komm, Jesu, Komm, which was composed between 1724 and 1731. Here Bach used the first and the last couplets from verse by the Leipzig poet Paul Thymich. In the motet Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden we hear verse from the 117^th Psalm. As this was published only in the 19^th century and is stylistically different to Bach’s other motets its authorship is disputed.
Hieronymus Praetorius (1560–1629) – not to be confused with the famous Michael Praetorius – was a German composer of the late Renaissance. He was one of the first in northern Europe to begin using the multi-choral style born at St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice in his own religious works. At that cathedral it was possible to stand not just in the choir but also on the tribunes at both sides of the altar and the balconies of the transept. The alternating singing of the choruses on opposite sides of the cathedral proved highly effective and soon became a fashion popular throughout Europe.
Praetorius’ works include Magnificat, a song from Catholic vespers that served as the culmination of the service. Until the middle of the 15^th century Magnificat had been a one-voice song and was performed to one of the eight psalm tones (melody models). Later multi-voice arrangements appeared in which the psalm melody was used as the basis of the composition – cantus firmus.
In Praetorius’ Magnificat the even-numbered verses are sung by several voices and the odd-numbered ones by a single voice. This technique was called alternatim, meaning “in turn”.
There is yet another masterpiece of Renaissance polyphony in Miserere mei, Deus by Gregorio Allegri, a motet to a text from a penitential psalm (Have mercy on me, God), which was performed at the Sistine Chapel once a year during Holy Week. There was no access to the score for a long time and the sheet music for Miserere, to which only chapel musicians could gain access, was not to be copied on pain of excommunication from the Church. This ban was lifted when, in 1770, after visiting the chapel the fourteen-year-old Mozart wrote down from memory the hidden work. He was not excommunicated; quite the reverse, Pope Clement XIV awarded the genius with the knight’s order of the Golden Spur.
Miserere is performed by two choruses – one four-voice and one five-voice, one of which sings the Gregorian chorale and the second, separated from the first in terms of space, responds with ornamented commentary. After the ban was lifted Allegri’s work became one of the most frequently performed a cappella choral works. The first audio recording, however, was only produced in 1963 by King’s College Choir (Cambridge). This year saw the release of a recording by the Sistine Chapel Choir.
Leila Abbasova