Humanism and the Invention of Homophony
This chapter takes a broad view of sixteenth-century homophonic genres to argue that homophony is a potent solution for several aesthetic problems motivated by the demands of humanism. The frottola reflects the transformation of an improvised tradition into a literate one: composers designed flexible musical frameworks that accommodated varied courtly poems but that sacrificed musical trajectories for poetic ones. Midcentury musique mesurée arose from a philosophical movement rather than a musical one; its rhythmic experimentation interacts in elegant ways with its harmonic trajectories. The Lutheran cantional brings homophony to the sacred realm; the demands of rote learning and the character of borrowed melodies overrode the development of a metrically motivated text-setting schemes. Though these repertoires set texts in three languages and span one hundred years, they share an interest in vernacular poetry and text comprehensibility. And they encourage the same kinds of listening strategies manifested in the balletto repertoire.