Music Styles in the Renaissance Era

Renaissance era or rebirth ear brought a new attitude towards music. It started in Europe, Italy to be exact, from the fourteen to the sixteen century. Italians wanted to bring “the rebirth of their past” (Kerman, p.65).This period brought the rebirth of humanism and acceptance of diversity of cultures.

Music was made to be played in the church during prayer times. When church lost power and control, music moved to the courts. Artists and musicians had more freedom and individualism to create music of their choice. During Renaissance era music sounds had smooth, imitative and polyphonic style. Renaissance music was church music or sacred music and secular music or non church music. Sacred music was still popular and it consisted of motet, mass, madrigal and laude genres. Motet is “short composition with Latin words, made up of short sections in the homophony and imitative polyphony.” (Kerman, p.77)

Mass is “the largest and most important service of the Christian liturgy” (Kerman, P. 68). Instrumental music was introduced for the first time. An “instrumental genre was the dance the pavan and the galliard” (Kerman, p.79). Most famous composers of that time were Dufay, Despres, Ockeghem and Dunstable.

“During the Baroque period, the foundations were laid for the following 300 or so years of musical expression: the idea of the modern orchestra was born, along with opera (including the overture, prelude, aria, recitative and chorus), the concerto, sonata, and modern cantata. The rather soft-grained viol string family of the Renaissance was gradually replaced by the bolder violin, viola and cello, the harpsichord was invented, and important advances were made in all instrumental groups.”(Naxos)

Baroque music was more intense and the t...

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...s inherently dramatic, and great composers found all sorts of ways to burst the boundaries of conventional sonata form in order to express great musical thoughts and emotions.” (Key Notes)

Works Cited

“History of Classical Music.” http://www.naxos.com/education/brief_history.asp

http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/history/history-bar.htm

“The Classical Era” October 14th. Feature-Classical” http://www.allmusic.com/blog/post/the-classical-era-3

“Musical Forms”. Rodrigo J. Alvirez. 2011 http://www.teoria.com/tutorials/forms/sonata01.php

Musicianship Resources. Shaffer, Kris. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 2012 http://csutheory.shaffermusic.com/resources/analysis/form/sonata-form-introduction/

http://www.key-notes.com/sonata-form.html

“Listen” Kerman, Joseph. Tomlinson, Gary. 7th edition byBedford / St.Martin’s, Boston-New York.