Publication: Rhetorical Strategies in Renaissance Sacred Polyphony: Three Examples for Undergraduate Music Classroom
Authors
Andreo Gázquez, Francisco José
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info:eu-repo/semantics/preprint
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https://harmahub.eu/
Abstract
Aportación al proyecto Erasmus+ KA220 "HarMA HUB: Music Theory Tools and Activities for HMEI’s in Europe". Partnerships for cooperation and exchanges of practices. ID Project : 2023-1-BE01-KA220-HED-000155070
HarMA HUB is a three-year cooperation partnership in higher education (Erasmus+ programme – KA220) led by the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles and funded by the European Union. The project, targeting teachers, students and researchers in music theory, will build up on the outcomes developed within the first edition (HarMA+, 2020-2023) by gathering music theory resources in an online open platform, fostering research and pedagogical innovation, and striving for a certain level of harmonisation of the academic offer at European level.
https://harmahub.eu/
This article explores the intimate relationship between text and music in sixteenth century polyphony, arguing that musical composition in this period transcended mere decoration to become a powerful rhetorical tool. Within the humanist paradigm, the selected composers consciously employed a vocabulary of musical figures to clarify, intensify, and dramatize the meaning of the liturgical text. Through an analytic approach to three vocal fragments, the study demonstrates how this symbiosis was achieved. The examples include the setting of each word with a specific musical gesture in Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Lamentations; the use of textural contrast to musically “paint” the psalm in Palestrina’s Super flumina Babilonis; and the insistent motivic repetition in Cristóbal de Morales’s motet Circumdederunt me as a sonic embodiment of the inevitability of death. The analysis reveals that these strategies are not incidental but are part of a persuasive musical discourse designed to guide the listener's affective and pedagogical experience through the meaning of musicalized text. This article provides analysis, theory or music history instructors and students with concrete case studies for exploring both the defining stylistic features of this historical period or the broader evolution of text–music relationships in music history.
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