# Renaissance to Baroque - Transition or Great Leap Forward?



## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Just a question that occurred to me having listened to a lot of Baroque music for the first time recently, and having heard alot of Renaissance music in the past, is there one piece of music that is like the lightbulb going on or is there a transitional movement from one style to the other? To be honest when I listen to Renaissance music I find it difficult to believe that it transitioned into what we get in the Baroque. I know a little of continuo, is that the great leap or is it counterpoint? Any and all suggestions encouraged and also if there is a pivot point piece please let me know your suggestions. I realise that the answer will no doubt be exceptionally complicated and thorny but hey, I'm up for a challenge and I wan't to listen to the music better.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I'd say a good transitionary area to explore is Sweelinck and those who were around him - Peter Philips, Scheidt, Scheidemann, Hieronimus Praetorius etc. Also Frescobaldi, whose toccatas may well have influenced paradigmatic baroque composers like Buxtehude and Titelouze(?), and yet Frecobaldi's canzoni da sonore, for example, seems to belong to an earlier style.

Very often in performance whether a composition sounds like it has the poetry of Renaissance music or the incisive rhetoric of baroque depends so much on the performer. Richard Egarr's Gibbons sounds so much more Renaissance lyrical and poetic than the slant that Laurent Stewart gives it; Robert Bates makes Titelouze sound baroque to me, especially in the final parts of the hymns, while Markus Goeke doesn't.



classical yorkist said:


> Any and all suggestions encouraged and also if there is a pivot point piece please let me know your suggestions.


Possibly Sweelinck's chromatic Fantasia, Swvw 258


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Possibly Sweelinck's *chromatic* Fantasia, Swvw 258


Ahh, is that what I've heard called the _circle of fifths_?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Monteverdi is frequently cited as a transitional figure. The coining of the term _seconda prattica_ in the preface to his fifth book of madrigals, in which Monteverdi distinguishes between the "old style" (strict control of dissonance within the rules of counterpoint) and his "new style" (freer use of dissonance justified by the expressivity of texts), is a convenient dividing line between periods, especially because the book was published in 1605, more or less exactly when the Baroque period is thought to begin anyway. This concept of a "new style" was also applied to the recently invented genre of monody (solo singing with improvised harmonic accompaniment, a precursor to basso continuo), and it's from monody that we get recitative and eventually opera, the unquestioned king of genres in the Baroque period. Monteverdi was in the thick of this too, starting with _Orfeo_ in 1607-again, right at the starting point of the Baroque.

In addition to Monteverdi, I also think of the Gabrielis (both Andrea and Giovanni) as epitomizing the transition between periods. Their sacred choral works, written in response to Reformation music and therefore symbolizing a historical break, provided the model for some of the most basic features of Baroque music. The alternation of choral passages and instrumental passages was referred to as the "concerted style," from which we get the term "concerto." In the instrumental passages, the younger Gabrieli specified exact instrumentation (something that was usually considered quite flexible depending on the available resources from performance to performance), and so he is in a sense the first to practice the art of orchestration as we understand the term. Significantly, these instrumental passages were referred to as "sinfonias." Most of these works revolved around a recurring choral refrain referred to as the "ritornello," which became a standard form in the Baroque period. And in addition to the choral and instrumental parts, these works featured basso continuo, a technique that was not only born with the Baroque period but also died with it and can therefore be fairly called one of the period's defining features.


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

Truthfully, you'd need to read a few hefty books to get to the bottom of the matter, as the 17th century, when much of the transition took place, is one of the richest and most varied periods in the history of music. There's no one piece that brought the change about, but rather many different tendencies, and you can't really get a CD or two showcasing the changes. Rather, you'd need to check out a whole bunch of composers. Mandryka had a great suggestion to listen to some Sweelinck, then move on to say, Scheidemann, and then finally Buxtehude - if you're into organ music, it's a very interesting voyage to undertake.

Then there's the standard reference which is very frequently mentioned, Monteverdi's madrigals: if you like a capella vocals, get yourself a set of his madrigal books, and you'll see how the style changes from the earlier ones to the later ones. You can do something of the same with viol ensemble music in England if you go from Gibbons to Lawes, for instance, but you'd need to get whole CDs of each composer's work - they were both very versatile.

Also, this depends on what you've heard of Renaissance music, which you say is "difficult to believe that it transitioned into what we get in the Baroque". Check out this Hieronymus Praetorius piece: 



 - the composer was born in 1560, and the piece itself is from 1602. Is it so difficult to believe that this eventually transitioned to vocal masterpieces by Bach and Vivaldi? And if you remove the instruments and add a bit more talent, and you get Tomas Luis de Victoria's famous O Magnum mysterium: 



 - again, I don't think it's that difficult to make the connection to Baroque masses.

Another interesting comparison: try listening to this Narvaez fantasia on lute, from a 1538 collection: 



 - and then to the first of Pachelbel's quarti toni organ fugues, from the 1690s: 



. Narvaez wasn't a particularly innovative composer, and Pachelbel wasn't trying to make a piece in Renaissance style (in fact there was a whole huge separate tradition of tiny organ versets for services). Just goes to show that some of the techniques weren't _that_ different in 150 years.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

classical yorkist said:


> Any and all suggestions encouraged and also if there is a pivot point piece please let me know your suggestions.


I just had another idea, Monteverdi Madrigals Bk 5, which starts off in the Renaissance with Cruda Amirilli, and ends up in the world of baroque opera with Questi Vaghi Concenti.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Myriadi said:


> Another interesting comparison: try listening to this Narvaez fantasia on lute, from a 1538 collection:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's an interesting comment about Pachelbel which encourages me to think of the fugues in a different way, thanks. Do scholars know why he wrote all those fugues?


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## classical yorkist (Jun 29, 2017)

I have listened to quite a lot of Renaissance music but never with the kind of critical ear that I'm now turning towards them, previously it had simply been for the joy of hearing the music. However, it's true to say that the latter 16th century is mostly unknown to me outside of English instrumental street music. I'm planning on rectifying that.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

classical yorkist said:


> Just a question that occurred to me having listened to a lot of Baroque music for the first time recently, and having heard alot of Renaissance music in the past, is there one piece of music that is like the lightbulb going on or is there a transitional movement from one style to the other? To be honest when I listen to Renaissance music I find it difficult to believe that it transitioned into what we get in the Baroque. I know a little of continuo, is that the great leap or is it counterpoint? Any and all suggestions encouraged and also if there is a pivot point piece please let me know your suggestions. I realise that the answer will no doubt be exceptionally complicated and thorny but hey, I'm up for a challenge and I wan't to listen to the music better.


Sadly, it may well be true that there are transitional pieces that have not survived, or are not readily accessible. I wonder if it is even possible to know what percentage of compositions from the period are still extant.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Another transitional composer - Trabaci. Bk 1 is renaissance; Bk 2 is baroque.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

classical yorkist said:


> Just a question that occurred to me having listened to a lot of Baroque music for the first time recently, and having heard alot of Renaissance music in the past, is there one piece of music that is like the lightbulb going on or is there a transitional movement from one style to the other? To be honest when I listen to Renaissance music I find it difficult to believe that it transitioned into what we get in the Baroque. *I know a little of continuo, is that the great leap or is it counterpoint?* Any and all suggestions encouraged and also if there is a pivot point piece please let me know your suggestions. I realise that the answer will no doubt be exceptionally complicated and thorny but hey, I'm up for a challenge and I wan't to listen to the music better.


I think it's indeed the basso continuo and the different approach to counterpoint. In Baroque instead of accomplishing counterpoint by composing separate voices (like in polyphonic renaissance music) the approach was more and more based on chords (on the strong measures). So there is still counterpoint in Baroque but it's different. As a result it sounds a lot more rhythmic (the metrum is stronger)

I don't know much about transitional examples, they probably exist but per definition they're rare otherwise there would be a third era between renaissance and Baroque of course 

For me personally I see Monteverdi as something in between renaissance and the High Baroque of Händel and Bach but that's just my personal view and not really based on much musicological knowledge.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

My suggestion is Ludi musici (1621) by Scheidt.
There's a great recording by Jordi Savall & Hesperion around there.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Razumovskymas said:


> I think it's indeed the basso continuo and the different approach to counterpoint. In Baroque instead of accomplishing counterpoint by composing separate voices (like in polyphonic renaissance music) the approach was more and more based on chords (on the strong measures). So there is still counterpoint in Baroque but it's different.


Exactly--the rules of counterpoint we've inherited may have been codified in the Baroque period, but this was a continuation of a process that had begun in the late-ish Renaissance. Far, far more emblematic of the Baroque period is the basso continuo because it demonstrates a completely new way of thinking about harmony. Since performers can realize figured bass however they want, the identity of a chord is independent from any particular spelling, figuration, or ornamentation. Chord _x_ is no longer simply the incidental result of different voices happening to sound simultaneously in a specific way; instead, it is an independent abstract concept that is recognizable regardless of the voicing. Two different musical examples consisting of totally different melodic content can now be thought of as expressing the same harmonic framework.

And the notion of harmony as an abstract framework wound up having tremendous consequences. It led to Rameau's observation that, for example, C-E-G, E-G-C, and G-C-E are different versions of the same basic harmony (i.e. the concept of root position and inversions). This, in turn, led to the realization that the roots of chords can be correlated with scale degrees: a chord with a leading tone can serve a harmonic function analogous to what a leading tone does melodically-i.e. lead to the tonic. Granted, the tendency of chords to function this way was not "invented" in the Baroque period; they had been doing so since the Renaissance. That's why Palestrina masses usually end with what we would call V - I cadences. But it is in the Baroque period that this tendency was theorized and codified. And this codification… well, it's what we call "tonality."


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