Dunstable....Dufay...des Prez...their names in lights....
Well, sort of...if there were 'lights' back then.
These are the people we study during the development of music in 1400-1500s. Why? Well, they must have done something important if we still talk about them.
The following developments were made in polyphony during this time:
- equality of voices
- free structure based on text
- sensitivity to text declamation
- persuasive consonance
- variety in sonority and rhythm
- strong tonal center
Humanism was the freeing of the imagination from authority. This meant that the church was losing it's grip on people...but this isn't always a bad thing. This allowed composers to begin composing freely...the way we think of composers today. Thinking was challenged and there was a revival of pre-Christian civilization ideas (ie: the Greeks).
The way I see it is that artists, composers, philosophers, and the like were able to express themselves more easily and .. well, freely. They still composed mass movements, but they no longer used the same conventions of the past.
des Prez's Kyrie (from Missa L’homme armé Sexti toni) uses the new developments listed above. I think the most important development from this period was the use of a specific cantus. In this case it is the L'homme arme cantus. I think this was the beginning of the concept of motives and having one idea to unify a piece between its different movements. It will be cool to see how the idea is developed further during the next period.
On another note, here is L'homme arme by Karl Jenkins (living composer). It's the full performance, so it's over an hour long.... but it's so cool to hear another composers way of using L'homme arme.
You do a nice job of summarizing the historical events of this period and connecting them to the music. And you're right that the advent of a unified, multi-movement piece in the cantus firmus mass will have major repercussions for what is to come. Thanks for including a link to Karl Jenkins' L'Homme armé mass - it's exciting to see such an old and storied tradition carry through our own time.
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