Origins of Renaissance Music
Documents, Sources, and Composition of 15-16th Century English Music
The daily sounds of fifteenth and sixteenth century England are reflected in the music of the time.
Charming as it is, English Renaissance music is foreign to the modern ear. One can enjoy the sharp, lilting notes, but in most cases only for a brief time. The main reason for this is that "recording devices" such as radio or CDs, made possible by electricity, now play such a large role in both the composition and listening of music that it is practically impossible to grasp the performance of Renaissance music in its day.
By studying documents, manuscripts, printed books, images, and music instruments in a 2006 exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C. ,scholars, musicians, professors and curators have written short essays or annotations to illustrations.
Until the late nineteenth/early twentieth century with the invention of the record player and radio and other, much more refined, sensitive music players, "sound was place specific. You could see where sounds were coming from. It was sounds, as much as sights, that made this place different from that place." "Cartwheels over cobbles, church bells, ferrymen calling for customers...were aural markers [which] defined the soundscape of early modern London."("Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires", Music in Early Modern England, compiled and edited by Jessie Ann Owens. Washington, D. C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2006. 222 pages.)
It is not that such sounds are unknown or unfamiliar these days; but in Renaissance London, they were the dominating "ambient" sounds. Although the bells, cries of hawkers, etc., may not be recognizable in the music, it was these sounds that made an impression on the composers and that they were trying to imitate.
The idea that music relates to sounds or other features of the physical world is logical. Many of Haydn's symphonies are nicknamed for sounds he embedded in them. Parts of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" are composed to call to mind a battle, including cannons being fired.
Less analogically, Beethoven's sixth symphony is called "Pastoral" for its references to scenes of nature. In English Renaissance music the pitch, frequency, associations, effects, etc., of the sounds cannot be recreated and thus they are grasp only by reference and commentary as found in this "Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires."
