# The baroque attitude to the renaissance.



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Does anyone know what baroque composers, especially early baroque composers, thought about renaissance music?


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## infracave (May 14, 2019)

Well the shift from Renaissance to Baroque is, as always, as blurred as the shift from medieval to renaissance or classicism to romanticism.
I see early baroque composers like Frescobaldi more like late renaissance composers since they are still heirs to modal counterpoint from the franco-flemish and roman school.
The most "real" early baroque composers would then be the ones frorm the venetian school. Hard to say what their attitudes where towards older renaissance composers. I for one think they didn't care that much, only seeking to enhance the expressive power of their music through the latest technical innovations.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Handel said that although he took what he needed from the past, he saw no need to worship it: “Knowledge of them is no doubt necessary for those who wish to study and execute ancient music composed according to these modes; but as we have been liberated from the narrow limits of ancient music, I cannot see of what use the Greek modes can be to modern music.” This is from the biography by Jonathan Keates.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Sid James said:


> Handel said that although he took what he needed from the past, he saw no need to worship it: "Knowledge of them is no doubt necessary for those who wish to study and execute ancient music composed according to these modes; but as we have been liberated from the narrow limits of ancient music, I cannot see of what use the Greek modes can be to modern music." This is from the biography by Jonathan Keates.


That's a really interesting quote, especially when we consider that a couple of centuries later many composers would be going back to the Greek modes for inspiration outside of major and minor writing.

Anyway, did Bach for example study Palestrina? I know he was pretty up to date on modern composers of his day, he studied Vivaldi, Pachelbel etc., but I don't know how much he would have been taught about Renaissance polyphony. He would have been older and quite accomplished by the time Gradus ad Parnassum was published. Outside of that book I'm not sure how much precedence there would have been for teaching Renaissance music in the 18th century.

Good question OP, unfortunately I have nothing to contribute but more questions.


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## infracave (May 14, 2019)

flamencosketches said:


> That's a really interesting quote, especially when we consider that a couple of centuries later many composers would be going back to the Greek modes for inspiration outside of major and minor writing.
> 
> *Anyway, did Bach for example study Palestrina?* I know he was pretty up to date on modern composers of his day, he studied Vivaldi, Pachelbel etc., but I don't know how much he would have been taught about Renaissance polyphony. He would have been older and quite accomplished by the time Gradus ad Parnassum was published. Outside of that book I'm not sure how much precedence there would have been for teaching Renaissance music in the 18th century.
> 
> Good question OP, unfortunately I have nothing to contribute but more questions.


_Palestrina was extremely famous in his day, and if anything, his reputation and influence increased after his death. J.S. Bach studied and hand-copied Palestrina's first book of Masses, and in 1742 wrote his own adaption of the Kyrie and Gloria of the Missa sine nomine._
From Palestrina's wiki entry


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Does anyone know what baroque composers, especially early baroque composers, thought about renaissance music?


Early in the baroque era there emerged elaborate classifications of music according to styles, indicating that the unity of style had been lost. There was now the _stile antico_ and _moderno_, also known respectively as _stylus gravis_ and_ luxurians_, or _prima_ and _seconda prattica_. Another distinction which emerged later in the 17th century divided the field into church, chamber, and theatre music (_musica ecclesiastica, cubicularis, theatralis_). These classifications are really according to sociological function and do not necessarily imply a difference in musical technique.

In his 'Miscellanea Musicale' of 1689 the Italian composer and music theorist, Angelo Berardi, contrasts the renaissance and baroque in the light of this acute awareness of style. Berardi writes, "the old masters [of the renaissance] had only one style and one practice, the moderns have three styles, church, chamber, and theatre style, and two practices, the first and the second." According to Berardi and his teacher Marco Scacchi (ca. 1600 - 1662), the essential difference between first and second practice lay in the changed relations between music and word. In renaissance music, "harmony is the master of the word"; in baroque music "the word is the master of harmony." This distinction touches upon a fundamental aspect of baroque music, the musical expression of the text or what was called, at the time, _expressio verborum_.

Of course, Berardi and other musicians of the baroque, including the noisy group of musicians and literati in Florence that organized around 1600 and called itself the _Camerata_, oversimplified matters by implying that the representation of words in music was unknown to the renaissance. The _Camerata_ brutally attacked renaissance music on the handling of the words. They claimed that in contrapuntal music the poetry was literally "torn to pieces" (_laceramento delta poesia_), because the individual voices sang different words simultaneously. This gave rise to the recitative in which the music was completely subordinated to the words. From its beginning the recitative was sung with extreme pathos, in which the singer resorted to grimaces, acting, and the imitation of the inflections of natural speech, like crying and gasping. In the eyes of the _Camerata_ it was this extreme affective quality of the recitative that made it superior to the "pedantic" methods of renaissance music. To the renaissance composer, however, such a display was little more than a ridiculous experiment which required only a most superficial familiarity with musical technique. There was this essential divide: When the baroque composer spoke about affections, he referred to the extreme and violent ones, considered improper by the renaissance composer. The argument was thus carried out on two levels that did not even touch each other.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks for these interesting responses. I didn't have time to mention this morning that I was prompted to ask the question because I looked at Peter Philips' paper "Beyond Authenticity", because deprofundis was asking about the Tallis Scholars. Phillips says



> I believe that sixteenth-century composers would have expected far greater unanimity between pieces in performance than we give them.; but I repeat that what was acceptable to sixteenth century ears is probably not so to twentieth century ones. To have to sit through a concert of Renaissance polyphony undertaken on these principles would be to understand why the early Baroque composers reacted so strongly against it.


He doesn't elaborate; and I guess he meant earlier composers than Haendel and Bach.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Early in the baroque era there emerged elaborate classifications of music according to styles, indicating that the unity of style had been lost. There was now the _stile antico_ and _moderno_, also known respectively as _stylus gravis_ and_ luxurians_, or _prima_ and _seconda prattica_. Another distinction which emerged later in the 17th century divided the field into church, chamber, and theatre music (_musica ecclesiastica, cubicularis, theatralis_). These classifications are really according to sociological function and do not necessarily imply a difference in musical technique.
> 
> In his 'Miscellanea Musicale' of 1689 the Italian composer and music theorist, Angelo Berardi, contrasts the renaissance and baroque in the light of this acute awareness of style. Berardi writes, "the old masters [of the renaissance] had only one style and one practice, the moderns have three styles, church, chamber, and theatre style, and two practices, the first and the second." According to Berardi and his teacher Marco Scacchi (ca. 1600 - 1662), the essential difference between first and second practice lay in the changed relations between music and word. In renaissance music, "harmony is the master of the word"; in baroque music "the word is the master of harmony." This distinction touches upon a fundamental aspect of baroque music, the musical expression of the text or what was called, at the time, _expressio verborum_.
> 
> Of course, Berardi and other musicians of the baroque, including the noisy group of musicians and literati in Florence that organized around 1600 and called itself the _Camerata_, oversimplified matters by implying that the representation of words in music was unknown to the renaissance. The _Camerata_ brutally attacked renaissance music on the handling of the words. They claimed that in contrapuntal music the poetry was literally "torn to pieces" (_laceramento delta poesia_), because the individual voices sang different words simultaneously. This gave rise to the recitative in which the music was completely subordinated to the words. From its beginning the recitative was sung with extreme pathos, in which the singer resorted to grimaces, acting, and the imitation of the inflections of natural speech, like crying and gasping. In the eyes of the _Camerata_ it was this extreme affective quality of the recitative that made it superior to the "pedantic" methods of renaissance music. To the renaissance composer, however, such a display was little more than a ridiculous experiment which required only a most superficial familiarity with musical technique. There was this essential divide: When the baroque composer spoke about affections, he referred to the extreme and violent ones, considered improper by the renaissance composer. The argument was thus carried out on two levels that did not even touch each other.


A pretty fascinating read. 
Thank you.


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