renaissance -- Baroque Music RENAISSANCE & BAROQUE MUSIC:

A COMPARISON

The music associated with the Renaissance Period, beginning circa 1450 and ending about 1600, brought about a number of significant changes as compared to its predecessor, being the Medieval Period. Musically, the Renaissance Period introduced the use of polyphony and saw the rise of the cantus firmus mass as Europe's first major musical form; in addition, there was an emergence of national schools of composition, a birth of new secular forms, the beginning of truly instrumental music and a series of inter-related developments, such as the use of monody and the bass continuo.

With polyphony, all of the musical parts are considered to be of equal importance and when combined produce not only an independent horizontal movement but also a vertical, being a combination of chords. The composers of the "ars nova," such as Guillaume de Machaut, created music of great lyrical quality as well as rhythmic complexity. One of the characteristics of the "ars nova" compositions was the frequent and often violent dissonances produced by the conflicting parts. This was first demonstrated in the music of English composers, led by John Dunstable and Leonel Power, both of whom had a decisive influence on the music of Europe.

There was also in England the use of the same basic cantus firmus for all the parts of a religious mass so that,...

Still more interesting than this development was the beginnings of specifically instrumental forms. The Italians took an important step when they adopted the French chanson and adapted it for instrumental music for the viol. But it was in compositions for the keyboard that a specific instrumental style first evolved.
The Italian canzona da sonar typified instrumental music of this period, since it had been derived from vocal form. The rise of the violin at the end of the 16th century and the growing number of virtuosi who cultivated it, was an influential step that had already been accepted by Spanish and English composers for the keyboard, mainly the pipe organ and the harpsichord. In the 1580's and 1590's, there was a radical break with the prevailing orthodoxy, being the movement away from polyphonic procedures in favor of a single melodic line accompanied by an instrumental bass and either a plucked or other keyboard instrument. This was the new art of monody from which grew the operatic medium of the recitative. From this small beginning, there followed a series of developments which led to the creation of the first true opera in Western music and indirectly led to the style of composition known as the basso continuo.

In contrast, the Baroque Period, spanning about form the time of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth until…