HP 509T Renaissance Performance Practice
Renaissance music is a vast repertoire of varied styles and is the largest source of Western chamber music. True to its humanist roots, Renaissance music is simultaneously high art and popular expression. Polyphonically and polyrhythmically complex it requires pristine technique along with interpretive skills often associated with popular music. Freed from the tyranny of the barline, the horizontal construct of polyphony allows boundless expressive freedom and requires each performer to function as both soloist and chamber musician. Through working with new repertoires and discovering new ways of hearing, understanding and interpreting, this course will foster growth expressively, technically, rhythmically and philosophically. Primarily a performance-based course, there will also research on such topics as modal theory, rhetoric and ornamentation. Performance repertoire will concentrate on works of the great Josquin des Prez as well as Claudin de Sermisy, Cipriano da Rore, the Gabrieli's and others.