What Is The Greatest Obstacle For The Integration Of Renaissance Music In Film

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The greatest obstacle for the integration of Renaissance music in film, is that it would have to be used very specifically. A majority of music from the Renaissance would be sung or played by either a brass or plucked instrument. This difference in instrumentation, let alone the difference in style, is arguably the main reason that Renaissance music is not used in film. The use is simply too specific, and an atmosphere that would be created by using Renaissance music, which is to say ethereal and light due to the use of polyphony, could just as easily be recreated with modern techniques and modern instrumentation. This may seem somewhat obvious to anyone who has listened to early music, however, the situation is more complicated than “Renaissance music is not orchestral.” Solo works, such as Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” have been used to great effect in film, as have pieces that contain a much stronger vocal element than orchestral element, such as Carl Orff’s “O, Fortuna.” The difference not necessarily being the instrumentation, but the compositional style as a whole. Modern practices for film composition, which may include topics such as post-tonal theory and Neo-Riemannian theory , differ substantially from those practices exercised during the Renaissance. This can be most easily seen simply by comparing the use …show more content…

It would also imply that Renaissance music is being marginalized in a field that is already marginalized in popular culture; classical music. As it stands today, however, there exists a lack substantial concrete evidence to support this. To determine if this theory is correct or not, a survey would have to be conducted to measure the approximate music history knowledge of today’s undergraduate

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