Renaissance music developed between 1400-1600. Key developments included the emergence of printed sheet music, new genres like the madrigal, and the rise of polyphonic styles. Instrumentation expanded with new brass, string, woodwind and percussion instruments. By the late Renaissance, highly complex polyphonic styles gave way to early Baroque trends like monody and opera that emphasized a dramatic, unified musical setting of text.

1. PRE BAROQUE MUSIC
RENAISSANCE PERIOD
PREPARED BY: GERALDINE REYES

2. Renaissance music
 The development of printing made
distribution of music possible on a wide
scale. Demand for music as entertainment
and as an activity for educated amateurs
increased with the emergence of a
bourgeois class.

3. Genres
 Principal liturgical forms which endured
throughout the entire Renaissance period
were masses and motets, with some other
developments towards the end, especially
as composers of sacred music began to
adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal)
for their own designs.

4. Early Renaissance music
(1400–1467)
 This group gradually dropped the late
Medieval period's complex devices
of isorhythm and
extreme syncopation, resulting in a more
limpid and flowing style. What their music
"lost" in rhythmic complexity, however, it
gained in rhythmic vitality, as a "drive to
the cadence" became a prominent feature
around mid-century.

5. Middle Renaissance music
(1467–1534)
 In the early 1470s, music started to be printed
using a printing press. Music printing had a
major effect on how music spread for not
only did a printed piece of music reach a
larger audience than any manuscript ever
could, it did it far cheaper as well. Also during
this century, a tradition of famous makers
began for many instruments. These makers
were masters of their craft.

6. Late Renaissance music
(1534–1600)
 In Venice, from about 1534 until around 1600, an
impressive polychoral style developed, which
gave Europe some of the grandest, most
sonorous music composed up until that time,
with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings
in different spatial locations in the Basilica San
Marco di Venezia (seeVenetian School). These
multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the
next several decades, beginning in Germany and
then moving to Spain, France and England
somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of
what we now know as the Baroque musical era.

7.  Musica reservata is either a style or a
performance practice in a cappella vocal
music of the latter, mainly in Italy and
southern Germany, involving
refinement, exclusivity, and intense
emotional expression of sung text.

8. Masses
 The 15th and 16th century masses had two
kinds of sources that were used, monophonic
and polyphonic, with two main forms of
elaboration, based on cantus firmus practice
or, beginning some time around 1500, the
new style of pervasive imitation. Four types
of masses resulted:

9.  Cantus firmus mass (tenor mass)
 The cantus firmus/imitation mass
 The paraphrase mass
 The imitation mass (parody mass)

10.  Masses were normally titled by the
source from which they borrowed.
Cantus firmus mass uses the same
monophonic melody, usually drawn
from chant and usually in the tenor
and most often in longer note values
than the other voices.

11. Mannerism
 In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance
era closed, an extremely manneristic style
developed. In secular music, especially in the
madrigal, there was a trend towards
complexity and even extreme chromaticism
(as exemplified
in madrigals of Luzzaschi, Marenzio, and Ges
ualdo). The term "mannerism" derives from
art history.

12. Transition to the Baroque
 Beginning in Florence, there was an attempt to
revive the dramatic and musical forms of Ancient
Greece, through the means of monody, a form of
declaimed music over a simple accompaniment; a
more extreme contrast with the preceding
polyphonic style would be hard to find; this was
also, at least at the outset, a secular trend. These
musicians were known as the Florentine Camerata.
 We have already noted some of the musical
developments that helped to usher in
the Baroque, but for further explanation of this
transition, see antiphon, concertato, monody, madri
gal, and opera, as well as the works given under
"Sources and further reading."

13. Instruments of the
Renaissance
 Many instruments originated during the
Renaissance; others were variations of, or
improvements upon, instruments that had
existed previously. Some have survived to
the present day; others have disappeared,
only to be recreated in order to perform
music of the period on authentic
instruments. As in the modern day,
instruments may be classified as brass,
strings, percussion, and woodwind.

14. Brass
 Slide trumpet
 Cornett
 Trumpet
 Sackbut

15. Strings
 Hurdy-Gurdy
 Lute
 Viol
 Lyre
 Irish Harp

16. Percussion
 Tambourine
 Jew's harp

17. Woodwinds (aerophones)
 Shawm
 Reed pipe
 Hornpipe
 Bagpipe/Bladderpipe
 Panpipe
 Transverse flute
 Recorder