The Development and Maturation of Brass Music in Renaissance Italy, ca. 1400-1600
Open Access
- Author:
- Smarcz, Nicholas Henry
- Graduate Program:
- Music Theory and History
- Degree:
- Master of Arts
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- April 18, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Marica Susan Tacconi, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- brass music
Renaissance
Italy
trombone
sackbut
Giovanni Gabrieli
brass
cornett
alta cappella
alta band
civic wind band
Florence
Neuschel
Bassano - Abstract:
- All areas of the arts flourished during the Renaissance, yet none underwent quite as dramatic a change as secular instrumental music. The music of brass instruments in particular grew in utility, demand, and complexity over a trajectory spanning 200 years. Vocal music dominated both the sacred and secular arenas from antiquity through the medieval period, but by the late 1300s instrumental music began to gradually gain in importance. This paper investigates the steady growth that brass music underwent from ca. 1400 to 1600, specifically within the realm of Italian secular music, and culminating with the printed instrumentation of brass instruments found in later sacred music. The civic instrumental ensembles of Florence were the first such bands in Italy, and had the greatest effect on brass music of the Renaissance. The trombadori, trombetti, and pifferi originated as simple bands of civic musicians, whose musical output contained little to no artistic emphasis. Over time the pifferi, a shawm and trombone ensemble, grew into one of the most progressive and influential ensembles of the Renaissance. While the trombadori and trombetti, both all-trumpet ensembles, remained largely static in form and function during this period, the pifferi underwent numerous changes in size, instrumentation, repertoire, salary, exposure, and demand. The Florentine pifferi likely inspired the creation of pifferi ensembles in city-states across Italy. Factors that influenced the development of the pifferi include the civic bands of Renaissance Germany, and the sophistication of the trombone as a musical instrument. Many German towns had established shawm and trombone ensembles prior to the formation of the Florentine pifferi. The Florentine ensemble’s creation was likely a response to these contemporary German ensembles. The Florentine pifferi, however, reached a level of artistic sophistication that no German ensemble of the day could match. The trombone emerged as an instrument due to the limitations of the slide trumpet, which in turn was a response to the restrictions of the natural trumpet. Around 1350, instrument makers, likely in Germany, added a telescopic slide to the natural trumpet, creating a way for performers to alter the length of the instrument during performance. During the next 100 years, this slide evolved into the double “U” shaped slide characteristic of the modern trombone. As instrument making grew more refined, trombones appeared more frequently in pifferi ensembles, until by 1524 the trombone was the dominant instrument in the pifferi. The pifferi’s repertory consisted largely of dance music and instrumental arrangements of vocal works. The sacred motet served as the primary resource from which these vocal works were drawn. However, many crossovers between sacred and secular music took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, involving not just the music of the pifferi ensemble, but the instruments and musicians as well. All of these factors contributed, either directly or indirectly, to the publication of Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sacrae Symphoniae in Venice in 1597: the first piece in history to specify an ensemble instrumentation of brass instruments.