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Unlike most other innovative aspects of Renaissance culture, changes in music originated in northern Europe and influenced composers writing for courts, churches, and civic institutions in the Italian and Iberian Peninsulas. Franco-Flemish polyphony sung in Latin, which resounded in the cathedrals of Europe during the 15th century, introduced new structural elements into liturgical compositions for the mass as several voices sang the various parts. Sections of the mass, such as the Gloria and Credo, and the Sanctus and Agnus Dei, became musically or liturgically (textually) related as pairs. These pairs might each open with the same melody or have the same plainsong tenor (the basic melodic line). A sin-

Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe

Gle cantus firmus (fixed song) sung in unison often supported the composition. Some of these innovations originated with English composers, notably Lional Power (d. 1445), John Dunstable (c. 1390-1453), and their contemporaries. Dunstable’s music, largely based on the harmonic intervals of thirds, was described as a sweet new style. Power was best known for linking cycles in the mass through related chants, and he trained chapel choirs for the duke of Clarence and Christ Church, Canterbury.

Composers in western Europe had ample opportunity to hear each other’s church music, such as during the Council of Constance (1414-18, see chapter 2, on religion). The various church councils of the 15 th and 16th centuries drew together bishops, cardinals, and other officials, who usually arrived with their own composers, musicians, and singers. The Holy See and Rome naturally were important locations for sacred music, and papal appointments as chaplains or choirmasters were considered plums among composers. Until about 1550, non-Italian composers such as Adriaan Willaert (c. 1490-1562) dominated sacred music in Italy. Then, in 1562, the Council of Trent appointed Cardinal Carlo Borromeo to head a commission charged with “purifying” sacred music of secular influences such as madrigals (see Secular Music, page 162). Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26-94) became the most influential composer of the new reformed style of sacred music.