The Baroque and Renaissance Periods of Music

The era of music history known as the Baroque Period was extended throughout the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, in which instrumental music was being consolidated. Until the Baroque, instrumental music was a minor genre, with vocal music being preferred by composers. This acceptance of instrumental music was based, among other reasons, on the success obtained by the bowed string instruments such as violin, viola, cello and contrabass. The genre of opera also appeared in the early seventeenth century. Both opera and instrumental music flourished during the Baroque Period, where the accompanied melodies, a new style in which a single melody, stands out clearly above any other instrumental accompaniment.

Exoticism, in simple terms, is a depiction of a place or time which is different to the here and now. During the Romantic period, musicians and composers had a renewed interest in literature, particularly folklore, poetry and theatrical productions set to music. Many composers wrote pieces known as tone poems, which were instrumental compositions intended to portray the event of a poem, play, or a certain mood, theme or aspect of nature. Due to the fact that poems or plays were often set in either distant places or the past, composers thus had to invent ways of portraying distant lands or periods of time through their music. This led to a dramatic growth of the harmonic spectrum with a pronounced focus on chromaticism, exotic scales such as the introduction of the octatonic scales, and new harmonic colourings with the introduction of modal harmonies, such as the 9th being used to add warmth and depth to a chord.

The suite is defined as a collection of movements that are put together by presenting in the same key (Suite, 2017). Suite is basically consisted of Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. However, Baroque suite sometimes has an additional element called Prelude, which is quite common in Bach’s works. Prelude is added serving as the introduction that gives a hint about the following theme. In this case, with the sonorous and cantabile sounds of cello, the resonant Prelude from Bach’s Suite No.

Both J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel use different aspects of music to compose important pieces of music. The baroque period is often known as the time when artists exaggerated their motion and produced drama through interpreted detail. Both of these composers used this baroque style to convey messages through their music. The similarity in their music was that it is in a spiritual manner.

The transition from the Classical period to the era of Romanticism affected all aspects of creative and performing arts. Romanticism was a Western cultural movement that started in the early 1800s. The movement affected all forms of art including literature, visual art and music. To extend the tone color alternatives accessible, a few new instruments were added to the ensemble amid this period, including a lot of percussion instruments, similar to the triangle, and in addition the tuba, show harp, and celesta, a piano-like instrument that has a sound like that of a music box. With this rich instrumental sense of taste, authors could make extremely passionate music.

Music as we know it today has been influenced by many different types of musical genres and as different types of music develop over time, at least some remanence of the past stays present in the music. What is usually forgotten in this process is who helped influence the development of that music along the way. The following will discuss one of those musical influences by discussing who exactly was Hildegard of Bingen, what impact did she have on music, and analyzing one of her compositions called O vos angeli. Hildegard of Bingen was born in Germany and lived between the years 1098 to 1179 (Bent) (Kamien, 69). She became a Benedictine nun after being promised to the convent by her parents when she was only eight years old (Bent).

Through this motet, Dezpres provides an example of inspiration in which composers incorporated and adopted classical values from the Medieval period into their work. For instance, he introduces the piece by using a polyphonic technique that was used in the Medieval period, and homorhythmic form that combines high voices with the low ones by moving together rhythmically. Also, He brings classic work such as the “Gregorian Chants” into this piece and combines them with the stylistic ideas of the Renaissance

The piece has a lot of variation where the composer include different timbres and dynamics such as the high dynamic structure during the first and the last part with the associating crashes of cymbals. The piece comprise of many musical instrument particularly string, brass, and woodwinds. The composer also use repetition in composing as the first part is repeated at the end of the piece, but with more sophisticated dynamics and timbre. In my opinion, the piece by Richard Wagner is a very good example for the topic of Basic Musical Concept that introduce many essential parts like referential listeners and structure of

Mariachi Music Mariachi music is a widely admired genre in the world now, but just recently it has risen in popularity. The word “mariachi” either means “marriage” in French or is an indigenous word for a wooden stage used by musical group performances. Before European conquest, natives used rattles, drums, flutes, and conch horns for religious occasions. When the Spanish arrived, they brought along violins, guitars, harps, brass horns, woodwind instruments, and colonial dancing, which eventually blended with the music of the natives. With these new additions, indigenous peoples and mestizos began to play European instruments along with their own musical inventions.

From about 1768 to 1774, that was kind of a time period for Haydn to mature and write more pieces as a composer. During that time frame,he wrote the music from The Stabat Mater to Missa Sancti Nicolai. He wrote a lot of operas during this period which of course made him much more popular. Some of the pieces from this period of his life include string quartets of Opus 20 and the farewell