Renaissance Music Influence

There are many things about the Renaissance time period that made it special. Between the swashbuckling pirates and the witchcraft, the Renaissance was an exciting era. There were also things like the Black Death and the London fire, that made this era equally as tragic as it was interesting. One thing that really defined the Renaissance time was the music. The music of the Renaissance was important in the cultural aspects of that time period. The music from the Renaissance is drastically different from music today. Not only because the structure of the music, but also because the influences for their music were different than the influences we have now. For instance, Plato was in important influence in Renaissance music (Kendrick “Music:

This was a popular way of writing songs. A polyphonic structure is a structure of music where multiple parts (vocal and instrumental) have similar melodies and sounds (Kendrick “Music: Renaissance”). Using this structure was an effective way to show the different technical parts of the music. Different literary concepts have also been used. Some french concepts and rhetorical terms were used in the writing of some of the pieces. Johannes Burmeister did an analysis of a piece by Lasso in his Musical Poetics in 1606 demonstrating this (Kendrick “Music: Renaissance”). Literary concepts are still widely used today in music as well the general theme of the basis and

One of these famous pieces was “La Messe De Notre Dame” by Guillaume De Machaut. Although he tended to focus on monophonic compositions, this song was one of his few polyphonic compositions (Hutchinson). Another one of Machaut’s famous pieces was “Hoquetus David”. This song was one of the first purely instrumental pieces of the era (Hutchinson). Gilles Binchois wrote a song called “De Plus En Plus” (“Gilles Binchois”). Binchois wrote many pieces, but this one was by far his most famous one. Guillaume Dufay wrote a very influential song. His song “Missa Caput” was the model for many Masses in the future (Brooks). Although the composers that wrote these songs are long gone, their pieces will continue to be heard and appreciated throughout the coming