Home > Renaissance music
Renaissance music is classical music written during the Renaissance period, approximately 1400 to 1600 A.D. Defining the end of the period is easier than defining the beginning, since there were no revolutionary shifts in musical thinking at the beginning of the 15th century corresponding to the sudden development of the styles corresponding to the Baroque era around 1600, and the process by which music acquired "Renaissance" characteristics was a gradual one.
The increasing reliance on the interval of the third as a consonance is one of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances: see interval). Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century: the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music—in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, which also made it necessary to write highly contrasting parts.
Towards the end of the 15th century, polyphonic sacred music (as exemplified in the masses of Ockeghem and Obrecht) had once again become complex, in a manner correlating to the stunning detail in the painting at the time; this was followed in the early 16th century by another trend towards simplification, as can be seen in the work of Josquin, and later of Palestrina, who was partially reacting to the strictures of the Council of Trent, which discouraged excessively complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text.
In the late 16th century, there were several important, contrasting trends. In secular music, especially in the madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and Gesualdo). Meanwhile, beginning in Florence, there was an attempt to revive the dramatic and musical forms of Ancient Greece, through the means of monodyMonody is a kind of music distinguished by having a single melodic line and accompaniment. Although such music is found in various cultures throughout history, the term is generally applied to Italian song of the early 17th century. It is contrasted with, a form of declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a more extreme contrast with the preceding polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. In VeniceVenice ( Italian Venezia German Venedig , the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto, population 271,073 (2001). The city stretches across numerous small islands in a marshy lagoon along the Adriatic Sea in northeast Italy. The saltwater l, from about 1550 until around 1610, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in the Basilica San Marco di Venezia (see Venetian polychoral styleThe Venetian polychoral style was a type of music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras which involved spatially separate choirs singing in alternation. It represented a major stylistic shift from the prevailing polyphonic writing of the middle R). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the BaroqueBaroque music is Western classical music from the Baroque era, after the Renaissance music era and before the Classical music era proper. This roughly covers the time period from Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) through Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). musical era.
Music with essentially Renaissance characteristics continued to be composed, particularly in England, but also in Spain, Portugal, and France, for the first few decades of the 17th century (see English Madrigal SchoolThe brief but intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them, is known as the English Madrigal School . The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and ge, air de courThe Air de cour was a popular type of secular vocal music in France in the very late Renaissance and early Baroque period, from about 1570 until around 1650. From approximately 1610 to 1635, during the reign of Louis XIII, this was the predominant form of). In addition, many composers observed a division in their own works between a prima prattica (music in the Renaissance polyphonic style) and a seconda prattica (music in the new style) during the first part of the 17th century.
Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire Renaissance period were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigalA madrigal is a setting for 4 6 voices of a secular text, often in Italian. The madrigal has its origins in the frottola, and was also influenced by the motet and the French chanson of the Renaissance. It is related mostly by name alone to the Italian tre) for their own designs. During the period, secular music had an increasingly wide distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding Medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost. Secular music included songs for one or many voices, forms such as the frottola, chanson and madrigal, consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles; and towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio.
Renaissance music was modal as opposed to tonal. Modality began to break down towards the end of the period, with root motions of fifths, one of the defining characteristics of tonality, becoming common, especially near cadences.
