When the influential treatise Ars Nova (“New Art”) by the composer Philippe de Vitry appeared early in the 14th century, the preceding epoch acquired its designation of Ars Antiqua (“Old Art”), for it was only in retrospect that the rapid developments of the century and a half from circa 1150 to circa 1300 could appear as antiquated. De Vitry recorded the innovations of his day, particularly in the areas of metre and harmony. While 13th-century music had been organized around the triple “modal” rhythms derived from secular music and a harmonic vocabulary based on “perfect” consonances (unison, fourth, fifth, octave), the New Art of the 14th century used duple as well as triple divisions of the basic pulse and brought about a taste for harmonious intervals of thirds and sixths.

The musical centre of 14th-century Italy was Florence, where a blind organist, Francisco Landini, and his predecessors and contemporaries Giovanni da Cascia, Jacopo da Bologna, and Lorenzo and Ghirardello da Firenze were the leading composers of several new forms: madrigals (contrapuntal compositions for several voices), ballatas (similar to the French virelai), and caccias (three-voice songs using melodic imitation).

Monophonic secular song

Secular music undoubtedly flourished during the early Middle Ages, but, aside from sporadic references, the earliest accounts of such music in the Western world described the music of the goliards—itinerant minor clerics and students who, from the 7th century on, roamed the land singing and playing topical songs dealing with love, war, famine, and other issues of the day. The emergence in France of a fully developed secular musical tradition about the beginning of the 12th century is evidence that the art had been evolving continuously before that time. Partially motivated by the attitude of chivalry engendered by the Crusades, a new lifestyle began among the nobility of southern France. Calling themselves troubadours, they circulated among the leading courts of the region, devoting themselves to writing and singing poetry in the vernacular. The troubadour movement flourished in Provence during the 12th and 13th centuries. About the middle of the 12th century, noblemen of northern France, most notably Adam de La Halle, took up the pastime, calling themselves trouvères. In Germany a similar group known as minnesingers, represented by Walther von der Vogelweide, began their activities about 1150 and continued for almost a century after their French counterparts had ceased composing. Late in the 13th century the burgher class in Germany began imitating the aristocratic minnesingers. Calling themselves Meistersingers, they flourished for more than 500 years, organizing themselves into fraternities and following strict rules of poetry, music, and performance. The most famous of them, Hans Sachs, was immortalized in the 19th century in Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Relatively little is known of similar secular musical activities in Italy, Spain, and England. Closely associated with the entertainments of the aristocratic dilettantes were the professional musicians of the peasant class called jongleurs and minstrels in France, Gaukler in Germany, and scops and gleemen in England.

The musical style that had been established by the troubadours—which was monophonic, of limited range, and sectional in structure—was adopted by each of the succeeding groups. Of particular significance in view of its influence on polyphonic music was the metric system, which is based on six rhythmic modes. Supposedly derived from Greek poetic metres such as trochaic (long–short) and iambic (short–long), these modes brought about a prevailing triple metre in French music, while German poetry produced duple as well as triple metre. A great variety of formal patterns evolved, in which musical structure and poetic structure were closely related. The most characteristic was the ballade, which was called Bar form in Germany, with an AAB structure. This type, along with the rondeau (song for solo voice with choral refrain) and the similar virelai (an analogue of the Italian ballata), was destined to become a favoured form employed by composers of polyphony such as Guillaume de Machaut, the universally acknowledged master of French music of the Ars Nova period. Machaut also continued the composition of motets, organizing them around recurrent rhythmic patterns (isorhythm), a major structural technique of the age. The beginnings of an independent instrumental repertory during the 13th century are represented by the estampie, a monophonic dance form almost identical in style to the vocal secular music.

The court of Burgundy

No one line of demarcation is completely satisfactory, but, adhering to commonly accepted usage, one may conveniently accept as the beginning of the musical Renaissance the flourishing and secularization of music at the beginning of the 15th century, particularly at the court of Burgundy. Certainly, many manifestations of a cultural renaissance were evident at the time: interest in preserving artifacts and literature of classical antiquity, the waning authority and influence of the church, the waxing humanism, the burgeoning of urban centres and universities, and the growing economic affluence of the states of western Europe.

As one manifestation of their cultivation of elegant living, the aristocracy of both church and state vied with one another in maintaining resident musicians who could serve both chapel and banqueting hall. The frequent interchange of these musicians accounts for the rapid dissemination of new musical techniques and tastes. Partly because of economic advantages, Burgundy and its capital, Dijon, became the centre of European activity in music as well as the intellectual and artistic focus of northern Europe during the first half of the 15th century. Comprising most of eastern France and the Low Countries, the courts of Philip the Good and Charles the Bold attracted the leading musicians of western Europe. Prime among them was Guillaume Dufay, who had spent some time in Rome and Florence before settling in Cambrai about 1440. An important contemporary of Dufay was Gilles Binchois, who served at Dijon from about 1430 until 1460. The alliance of Burgundy with England accounted for the presence on the Continent of the English composer John Dunstable, who had a profound influence on Dufay. While the contributions of the English to the mainstream of Continental music are sparsely documented, the differences in style between Dufay and his predecessor Machaut are partially accounted for by the new techniques and, especially, the richer harmonies adopted by the Burgundian composers from their English allies.