Misplaced Pages

Renaissance music: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 01:56, 5 May 2004 editAntandrus (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators111,295 edits Rewrote the beginning; still needs more← Previous edit Revision as of 10:33, 9 May 2004 edit undoMarcus2 (talk | contribs)12,779 editsNo edit summaryNext edit →
Line 81: Line 81:
*] (c]-]) *] (c]-])
*] (c]-]) *] (c]-])
*] (c1595-1663)
*] (c]-c]) *] (c]-c])
*] (c]-c]) *] (c]-c])

Revision as of 10:33, 9 May 2004


Template:History of Art Music

Renaissance music is classical music written during the Renaissance period, approximately 1400 to 1600 A.D. in most of Europe, and up to about 1620 A.D. in England. 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.

Principal liturgical forms of the period were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end; 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 chanson and madrigal, consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles.

Forms

Composers