Renaissance Period - Melody
General characteristics of melodies in the Renaissance period
- Melodies were mainly based on A mode is neither a major or minor scale and dates back to very early music. Each mode has a different combination of tones and semitones. - types of scale found in the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
- Most of the melodies were A melody that moves by step. with the occasional leap. This is because the majority of compositions were still vocal. Step-wise melodies are very suitable for singers.
- The range of most Renaissance melodies was limited to the vocal range for which the melodies were written. Instrumental melodies have similarly narrow ranges.
Melodic devices
Imitation
Where one musical part copies another. can be found in a lot of sacred choral music from the Renaissance period. A melody would often be sung in one voice - eg soprano - and then copied by another voice shortly afterwards.
An example of this can be found in the motet Sicut cervus by Giovanni Pierlugi da Palestrina. The tenor opens with a simple conjunct melody, which is imitated by the alto line shortly afterwards - a The interval from the first to the last of five consecutive聽notes聽in a聽diatonic scale. above. The soprano and bass then imitate the same melody. All of the entries in this motet are imitative. It is worth listening to the whole thing to hear how the individual lines work together. Another example of imitation can be heard in William Byrd鈥檚 Civitas sancti tui.
Word-painting
Composers of Renaissance A secular vocal piece for unaccompanied choir. often used word-painting to set their chosen texts as expressively and effectively as possible. In Weelkes鈥 madrigal As Vesta was from Latmos Hill Descending, the word 鈥渄escending鈥 is set to a descending scale, and the word 鈥渁scending鈥 is set as an ascending scale. The music descends when the voices sing 鈥渞unning down amain鈥, and Thomas Weelkes even reflects 鈥渢wo by two鈥, 鈥渢hree by three鈥 and 鈥渢ogether鈥 in the number of voices singing each time.
Decoration
A lot of Renaissance instrumental music is decorated with Notes added to decorate a melody.. These include mordents, Two adjacent notes that are played rapidly one after the other. and turns. They appear in a lot of keyboard and lute music of the time. A good example is My Lady Nevell鈥檚 Ground by Byrd.
A mordent is formed by playing a note, the note above and then returning to the first note.
This video explains a mordent and its effect:
Ornaments, from acciaccatura to appoggiatura, and the more pronounceable examples, such as mordent and trill
Trill
A trill is two adjacent notes that are played rapidly one after the other.
Turn
A turn is a short decoration consisting of the note above the one indicated, the note itself, the note below the one indicated, and the note itself again. It is marked by a mirrored S-shape lying on its side above the stave.