Renaissance Polyphony
Renaissance Polyphony:
The Foundation of Modern Western Music
Renaissance Polyphony:
The Foundation of Modern Western Music
The music of the Renaissance was essentially the beginning of all modern musical thought- the first to truly integrate various forms of harmony with definite structure. The music provided rapid and significant advancements in harmony within western music, evolving from the parallel lines of Ars Nova and culminating in the base ingredients for tonality and monodic chord analysis all in a relatively short period of two hundred years. The evolution of Renaissance polyphony expanded tonal harmony through the use of multiple voices and their interval relationships, established aural and music technicality conventions, and provided the groundwork for all tonality based western music. The foundation of Renaissance polyphony can be found in the organum of the eleventh century and more specifically in the ars nova which came to prominence in the fourteenth century. Organum briefly appeared in the tenth century but was dismissed by the Catholic Church and did not become popular until the eleventh century. Organum was the first notable use of harmony in the western world and was the first genre to more than one voice part (in this case, two). Composers took melodies from Gregorian chant and extended them harmonically with parallel fifths and especially parallel fourths. The intervals of the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave were considered the only concords during this period and use of other intervals was considered cacophonous. Later organum used stepwise motion within the mode of the composition to reach the concord interval as well as to move in oblique motion to end in a unison. Organum from the Notre Dame school based out of Paris in the thirteenth century even created the first contrary motion, with one voice moving from unison upward a step and the other downward by a minor third to form a perfect fourth interval (Ferguson,
The Foundation of Modern Western Music
Renaissance Polyphony:
The Foundation of Modern Western Music
The music of the Renaissance was essentially the beginning of all modern musical thought- the first to truly integrate various forms of harmony with definite structure. The music provided rapid and significant advancements in harmony within western music, evolving from the parallel lines of Ars Nova and culminating in the base ingredients for tonality and monodic chord analysis all in a relatively short period of two hundred years. The evolution of Renaissance polyphony expanded tonal harmony through the use of multiple voices and their interval relationships, established aural and music technicality conventions, and provided the groundwork for all tonality based western music. The foundation of Renaissance polyphony can be found in the organum of the eleventh century and more specifically in the ars nova which came to prominence in the fourteenth century. Organum briefly appeared in the tenth century but was dismissed by the Catholic Church and did not become popular until the eleventh century. Organum was the first notable use of harmony in the western world and was the first genre to more than one voice part (in this case, two). Composers took melodies from Gregorian chant and extended them harmonically with parallel fifths and especially parallel fourths. The intervals of the perfect fourth, fifth, and octave were considered the only concords during this period and use of other intervals was considered cacophonous. Later organum used stepwise motion within the mode of the composition to reach the concord interval as well as to move in oblique motion to end in a unison. Organum from the Notre Dame school based out of Paris in the thirteenth century even created the first contrary motion, with one voice moving from unison upward a step and the other downward by a minor third to form a perfect fourth interval (Ferguson,
Cited: Born, Georgina. "Modern Music Culture: On Shock, Pop, and Synthesis." Ed. Simon Frith. Popular Music. Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 2004. Google Books. Web. 12 April 2010. Furgeson, Donald N. A Short History of Music. New York: Fs Crofts and, 1943. Print. Gray, Cecil. The History of Music. 7th ed. London: Lund Humphries, 1947. Print. Jeppesen, Knud, Alfred Mann, and Glen Haydon. Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Dover Publications, 1992. Google Books. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. Pirrotta, Nino. Musica Disciplina 9 (1955): 57-71. JSTOR. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. Reese, Gustave. Music in the Renaissance. New York: WW Norton and, 1954. Print.