How Did Palestrina Contribute To The Music Of The Renaissance?

Every period in human history has some distinct features in art and music. In the Renaissance period, 1400-1600, the celebration of music and art led to creation of some of the most admired art pieces in human history. In visual art, the paintings of Michelangelo Buonarotti such as Last Judgment or Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper form the list of the most admired painting of the Renaissance period. According to Morrison (2014), Renaissance is distinct in history of art because of four reasons namely, it marked the development of linear perspective that gave rise to three and two dimension art, development of light-dark painting, development of proportional representation of objects, and development pictorial language. The music of Renaissance

This contribution puts him among music artists that chose to bring change in the manner of writing music. Composing a song from Lamentation was a big challenge to many artists because of the unremitting intensity of the biblical narrative describing grief, suffering, and anger. Palestrina’s approach to dealing with the challenging text of lamentation was to write music with unvarying sombreness (Baker, 2006). Palestrina made a number of changes so that he would not only compose the Lamentation of Jeremiah, but also sing it. He modified the text of the lamentation by introducing non-liturgical elements so that he would create compete contrast of style and mood of the music (Baker, 2006). Largely, this approach enabled him to achieve harmony in his composition. The non-liturgical composition relied on homophony that gave it harmonious tonal variation. In this composition, Palestrina changed key signatures and clef so that he would produce changes in vocal groupings (Lockwood, 2009). This composition had constant variety and contrast. The composition has a vocal group for a five-part ensemble and provides up to seven different

In both art works, the composer and the painter reflected on the societal events and beliefs. During the Renaissance period, Christian movement influenced the composition and the production of the artists. In the case of the Lamentation of Jeremiah and Last Judgment, the artist used the biblical literature that was common at that time to create their art pieces. The Renaissance movement is known for mannerism or the exodus from the traditional art to a new form of art (Morrison, 2014). Both the liturgical composition of Palestrina and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment had the element of mannerism. Both of these art pieces intentionally ignored the traditional methods of doing things. Both artists were born in the Renaissance period and they embraced the techniques that were common during this period. For example, painting was a two-dimensional work whereas the music composition of the time, which was liturgical music was only common during this