The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory Book PDF Free Download
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As you recall, polyphony first came to the Mass in the fourteenth century, thanks to Machaut. Those early Masses used a cantus firmus based on Gregorian chant.
In the fifteenth century, however, secular tunes were introduced into the Mass; the cantus firmus was frequently based on chansons or other secular melodies and used to unify all five sections.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Mass had evolved into an unaccompanied contrapuntal style, as practiced by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, William Byrd (1542-1623), and others.
The Renaissance-era Mass was also more elaborate than that of the medieval period; composers became more ambitious, using more voices and instruments and adding more and more elaborate ornamentation to the music.
It was during the Renaissance that the Mass became a monumental genre, comparable in scope to the symphonies of the nineteenth century.
Making More of the Motet At the beginning of the Renaissance, the motet was a relatively small-scale sacred form.
But as the Mass form peaked in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, composers turned to the motet as a vehicle of experimentation.
These later motets were full of contrasts, with passages for all voices paired with passages for just two or three voices, or sections in duple time followed by sections in triple time.
This more sophisticated motet form is best represented by the works of Orlando de Lassus (1532-1594), who also emphasized the depiction of individual words in the text, incorporating techniques developed earlier in the madrigal form.
Other notable modern composers were Palestrina, who composed 180 motets, and Guillaume Dufay, who introduced secular melodies into the cantus firmus.
| Writer | Michael Miller |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 338 |
| Pdf Size | 2.23 MB |
| Category | Music |
| Sources | pdfdrive.com |
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory Book Pdf Free Download