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General characteristics of harmony and tonality in the Renaissance period

• Harmonies in the Renaissance period usually came from the combination of polyphonic melodies.
• The overall tonality of the music was based on modes - types of scales found in the Medieval and Renaissance periods - or major, or minor, scales.
• The chords created by polyphony were mainly major or minor. Occasionally, the final chords had no third and were neither major nor minor.
• Dissonant notes in chords had to be prepared and resolved.
• False relations were used to create harmonic interest.
• Drones were often used as a basic accompaniment.

Harmony from polyphony

In vocal music, chords were formed from the individual melody lines interweaving, or polyphony. These were usually major or minor chords. The score below is from Sicut Cervus by Giovanni Pierlugi da Palestrina. The notes on the first and third beats of the bar form part of a chord in G major - the key of the piece. Also, the dissonance in the soprano line is prepared and resolved by step.

The final chord of Thomas Tallis’ If ye love me is an open fifth – there is no third. This is frequently found in Renaissance music.

False relation

A false relation is a type of dissonance that occurs in Renaissance music. It is a harmonic clash that happens when a note in one part is played or sung at the same or immediately before or after a chromatically altered version of the same note in another part. The example below is from William Byrd’s Ave verum corpus. The F sharp and F natural are sung very close to each other in the tenor and bass parts.