Page 79 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

FiguRE 4.8
Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotunda (c. 1550) near Vicenza, Italy, clearly shows the extent to which classical architecture was reborn during the Renaissance. Elements of
the ancient Greek and Roman style include the columns with capitals, triangular pediments, and central rotunda.
intellectuals turned to the writings of Greek philosophers, dramatists, and music theorists, which contained accounts of how ancient music was constructed and performed. In this way Renaissance musicians came to realize that the ancients had one primary article of faith regarding music: it had enormous expressive power.
To recapture the lost power of music, Renaissance musicians worked to forge a wholly new alliance between text and music. In the Middle Ages text and music had coexisted on independent emotional levels, and
an abstract, almost otherworldly musical experience result-
ed. Now in the Renaissance the job of music was to work
with the text and underscore its meaning at every turn of
phrase. If the verse depicted birds soaring gracefully in the
sky, the accompanying music should be in a major key and
ascend into a high range; if the text lamented the pain and
sorrow of sin, the music ought to be in a minor key, full of
dark and dissonant chords.
Compared to medieval compositions, those of the Renaissance are more overtly emotional, even “moody.” A similar development occurred in Renaissance visual arts, which now likewise allowed for a greater range of emotional intensity. Compare, for example, the highly contrasting moods of two paintings created within a few years of each other—the peaceful serenity of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Lady with the Ermine (Figure 4.9) and the painful intensity of Mathias Grünewald’s Saint John and the Two Marys (Figure 4.10).
FiguRE 4.10
The expressive grief of the Virgin, Saint John, and Mary Magdalene mark this portion of an altarpiece (1510–1515) painted by Mathias Grünewald.
FiguRE 4.9
Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, called The Lady with the Ermine (1496). Cecilia was the mistress of the duke of Milan, Leonardo’s patron, and she clearly enjoyed the finer things of this earthly world, including clothing, jewelry, and exotic animals like the ermine, or mink, that she holds.
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© Cameraphoto Arte, Venice/Art Resource, NY