Lesson 33: Renaissance Recorder Music

• Play Renaissance pieces with the modal, vibrato-free sound of the period.
• Recognise the modal cadences that distinguish Renaissance from Baroque.

• Lessons 14 and 24 — F major and compound meter.

• Renaissance modal melody.
• Branles, pavanes, tourdions.
• Pre-tonal harmony.

The Renaissance recorder did not vibrato, did not crescendo within a note, and did not lean on dissonance the way the Baroque would.

The recorder's first golden age was the sixteenth century. Consorts of recorders — four, five, even six instruments — played the dance music collected by Susato, Praetorius, Arbeau, and the publishers of Playford's English Dancing Master. The style asks for straight tone (no vibrato), modal cadences (the leading tone often unraised), and clear, declamatory articulation.

The modal cadence

Modern ears expect the leading tone (the seventh degree of the scale) to be raised at a cadence — B natural at the end of a C major phrase. Renaissance music often leaves it natural in the mode it was written in: Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian. The result is a cadence that sounds open or unfinished to modern ears — and that is the period sound.

Renaissance articulation

Quick, clear, but not driving. The notes were considered to be sung; the recorder's tonguing is the voice's consonants. Avoid forte-piano contrasts — the period preferred even, declamatory phrasing.

Now play these

Pavane: Belle qui tiens ma vie

Arbeau, 1589. The most-played Renaissance pavane. Slow, dignified, modal.

Branle Simple

A side-stepping circle dance from the same source.

Branle Gay

A skipping branle. Lighter, faster, leaping figures.

Tourdion

A vigorous galliard-like dance. Modal cadences throughout.

Canarios

A Spanish dance of Canary Islands origin. Lively, syncopated, modal.

When you can play a Renaissance dance with straight tone, modal cadences, and clean articulation — and it sounds different from a Baroque piece — move on to Lesson 34.