Renaissance and Baroque Music, Humanism, and Cultural Change

Renaissance and Baroque: Music, Culture, and Innovations

Historical milestones

The event that marks the beginning of the modern age is the discovery of America in 1492. A European intellectual movement that considers man the center of all things and proposes the study of classical Greco-Roman culture is called humanism. It follows the classical standards of beauty: order, perfection, balance, proportion, and measure. This marks the end of the theocentric society that had ruled until the Middle Ages and the rise of anthropocentrism. An important invention that served to transmit ideas and creations more quickly in this era is the printing press. The first great artistic period of the modern age is the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries). The second major artistic period of the modern age is the Baroque (17th century). The event that marks the end of the modern era is the French Revolution in 1789.

Sacred and court music centers

Cathedrals, courts, and chapels arose as major music centers, working to meet the musical needs of the Church, the monarchy, and the nobility. They reached great perfection in the treatment of polyphonic voices. This expressive development contrasts with the more speculative contrapuntal perfection associated with the Ars Nova. There was great uniformity across regions, which justifies speaking of an international style.

Major musical forms

The principal sacred musical form was the Mass, often composed from a single melody taken from the Gregorian repertoire that gives unity and coherence to the whole work. The Mass has five fixed parts (ordinary):

• Kyrie
• Gloria
• Credo
• Sanctus – Benedictus
• Agnus Dei

A shorter sacred form is the motet, a polyphonic vocal composition on a religious or liturgical Latin text, usually sung a cappella (i.e., without instruments).

In secular music, the most important genre was the madrigal, a polyphonic vocal piece typically in the vernacular (as opposed to liturgical Latin). Other forms such as the carol (in Spain) and the frottola (in Italy) occupied an intermediate position between popular and high culture.

Characteristics of Renaissance music

• Clarity in melodic lines, with the text often treated uniformly across voices.
• Expressiveness—music strove to follow the meaning of the text.
• Transition from the superposition of independent voices with different texts to an imitative style in which voices respond to or chase a single text.
• Greater expressive and timbral contrast that announces the coming of the Baroque.
• Progressive replacement of strictly imitative counterpoint by a harmonic conception centered on a melody in the upper voice (soprano), as in solo song with instrumental accompaniment and in some Protestant choral practice.
• Rhythmic variation increased, especially in sacred vocal music, and vocal writing began to become more independent from instrumental practice.
• Instrumental ensembles and purely instrumental genres began to be created and developed.
• The printing press favored rapid dissemination across wide areas and the exchange of genres, styles, forms, and instruments between different European countries, reinforcing the notion of an international style.