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well and, unlike much of the popular music of the Middle Ages, we have a good general sense of how it sounded. During the Middle Ages most popular musi- cians, like pop musicians today, worked without benefit of written musical nota- tion. In fact, most people in the Middle Ages couldn’t read—text or music—and manuscripts (by definition copied by hand) were exceedingly expensive.
All this began to change, however, when Johann Gutenberg invented printing by movable type around 1460. Printing revolutionized the world of information in the late fifteenth century no less than the computer did in the late twentieth century. Hundreds of copies of a book could be produced quickly and cheaply once the type had been set. The first printed book of mu- sic appeared in Venice in 1501, and to this important event can be traced the origins of today’s music industry. The standard press run for a printed book of music then was usually five hundred copies. Mass production put the music book within reach of the banker, merchant, lawyer, and shopkeeper. “How to” manuals encouraged ordinary men and women to learn to read musical nota- tion, so as to sing and to play an instrument at home. The learned amateur had arrived.
dance music
Our fascination with dance didn’t begin with Dancing with the Stars. Dancing had existed, of course, since the beginning of time, although almost none of its music survives because it was passed
along orally and not in written form. Dur-
ing the Renaissance, however, musicians came to benefit from the growth of liter- acy. Publishers now issued collections of dance music in notation, rightly assum- ing that many among the newly emergent middle class could read the notes and were ready to play and dance at home. Not wishing to miss a single sale, they issued volumes for wind instruments, keyboard instruments, “and any other in- struments that might seem appropriate.” A favorite ensemble—something akin to the Renaissance dance band (Figure 4.15)—included an early trombone and a predecessor of the modern oboe, called the shawm. Its piercing tone made the melody easy to hear.
By far the most popular genre of dance of the mid-sixteenth century was the pavane, a slow, gliding dance in duple meter performed by couples hold- ing hands. It was often followed by a contrasting galliard, a fast, leaping dance in triple meter. (For a painting believed to show Queen Elizabeth I leaping in a galliard, see Figure 4.17.) Around 1550 the French publisher Jacques Moderne issued a collection of twenty-five anonymous dances that included several pa- vanes and galliards. Moderne titled this collection Musicque de joye (Music of Joy)—listen (see Listening Cue) and you’ll understand why.
FiguRE 4.15
The band of municipal musicians employed by the city of Nuremberg, Germany, as painted by Georg Eberlein, c. 1500, after a mural by Albrecht Dürer in the Nuremberg Town Hall. The core instruments are the two early trombones and two shawms; also visible are a cornetto (left), recorder, and drum.
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Germanisches Nationalmuseum
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