ART & MUSIC

Music of the middle Ages and the Renaissance

Music of the middle Ages and the Renaissance

Introduction

The average age of music begins after the fall of the Roman Empire and ends in the fifteenth century after a serious crisis that began in the fourteenth century. In the West, the church became the cornerstone of medieval life. Monks and religious music composed to make more solemn liturgy. From Gregorian music got developed that led to the birth of a revolutionary mode of expression: the polyphony. On the other hand, imposing buildings provided artistic styles that were the scene of these melodies. Medieval music is a general term for a period covering nearly 800 years of history of Western music religious and secular, commencing with the first Christian music before the Gregorian reform.

It gets characterized by the appearance of forms including vocal and instrumental polyphony, court music, the Mass, the courtly love lyric. Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, roughly between the years 1400 and 1600. This is a convention: if the last date is hardly contestable in respect of the important developments of the early seventeenth century, and marks the beginning of the Baroque period, it is not the same for the beginning of this period. These two centuries are clear in terms of music, in continuity with what we call the late middle ages, before the acquisition of specific features (Gold, 2005).Similarities and dissimilarities

The basic revolution in the music gorwas developed in the 15th and the16th century in times of ancient Greeks and Romans. The return of Antique was initiated by the composers of the Renaissance. As they had only theoretical writings on Greek music, they have developed their own style based on these writings. Unlike the Middle Ages, music writing accepts the thirds and sixths as consonances: because you spend, the Renaissance, the Pythagorean scale in the range of Zarlino, in which thirds, and sixths are fixed and more "right", they become used to complement the fifths, fourths and octaves have previously defined (and sounding only in the Middle Ages). Temporal evolution

The middle ages cover the historical period that goes from V to the XV century and is the time in which they are the peoples of Western Europe. Medieval society gets characterized as exclusively rural and because a large proportion of the population saw is a shortage of resources. At this time, there is religious expansion of Islam and the Christian Church began the work unifying rites of Christianity. Renaissance got divided temporally into several periods with one major composer of that era.

1420 - 1460: Dunstable, Dufay, Binchois

1460 - 1490: Dufay, Ockeghem, Busnois

1490 - 1520: Obrecht, Isaac, Josquin, Mouton

1520 - 1560: Willaert, Gombert, Clemens non Papa, Janequin

1560 - 1600: A. Gabrieli, Monte, Lassus, Palestrina

A final group of composers formed by G. Gabrieli, Sweelinck, Gastoldi, Gesualdo, Monteverdi and Marenzio form a kind of bridge between the Baroque, as they have written both in Renaissance style (they called prima prattica) and in the baroque style (that they called seconda prattica)

Changes in geographical

The Medieval Music or the Baroque period was one ...