Claudio Monteverdi : An Italian Composer Of The Baroque Period

     This madrigal is an excellent example of Monteverdi’s late Renaissance vocal style, with its elaborate

The Baroque era began in the year 1600, at the end of the Renaissance period (Kamien 99). The word Baroque has had several different meanings. Back in its time, the word Baroque has meant: Bizarre, Flamboyant, and Elaborately ornamented. Historians, however, used this word to indicate the particular style in all different forms of art that fills space; which includes canvas, stone, or sound (Kamien 99). The Baroque Period is also known as “the age of absolutism” because so many different rulers of the time used and abused their royal power to control their subjects. For example, in Germany, the duke of Weimar imprisoned the famous Johann Sebastian Bach into prison for a month just because Bach asked to leave his job as the Duke’s musician (Kamien 99). This era in time was also home to scientific discoveries by Newton and Galileo. The Baroque era has shaped the world, as they knew it, to what the people of the twenty-first century all know and love.

Reality comes from creating an imagined thought - whether that thought stemmed from something that someone has seen to what someone has heard, or even felt. The composer that will be discussed throughout this essay composed Morir non può il mio cuore in 1566, this composer is none other but Maddalena Casulana. During the years in which Casulana composed music, she was always looking to present her dedications of her madrigal volumes in a way to provide a little more biographical information than most would at the time. Throughout 1560-1569, she began to publish what would ultimately become her three-volume collection of madrigals (1568; 1570; 1583) that were published the year of her death and which were the first three books of madrigals by a women composer to ever be printed (Franck, Brownstone, 1995. Page 46, 48). Casulana presented her music in a very dramatic way, she was different and unique, focusing and attracted to the topics of ones passing and perpetual dying (Sadie, 1980. Page 2). She was an Italian composer and singer who told a story through the pieces she had composed; expressing each piece in a distinct and narrative way. Maddalena Casulana contributed a great deal of music that till this day will be remembered and cherished.

In the text Maestro, the composer uses techniques such as similes, metaphors and multi-sensual images to convey distinctively visual,

In any musical drama, be it opera, oratorio, or even musical theatre, it is possible for a composer to convey the personality of their characters through compositional and musical techniques. Doing so heightens the audience’s understanding of the characters, their motivations, and the relationships between them. Monteverdi, as a pioneer of opera, was one of the first to capitalize on this opportunity to heighten the audience’s understanding of the characters. This is highly apparent in his last opera, L’Incoronazione di Poppea. The music for two of the characters, Poppea and Nerone, is especially well composed to demonstrate personality, and this is no more apparent than in the dialogue which introduces the audience to them, Signor, deh

The Classical time period, which spanned a length of seventy years, from 1750 to 1820, was very different in nature from its predecessor, the Baroque time period. The Baroque era featured works that were ornamentally elaborate, where the artists and composers centered their works on a big, bold style that was dramatic in its composition. Artists and composers transferred strong feelings of tension and emotion into their works and it was common for there to be some type of action or movement happening within the work. Those who lived in the Classical time period, valued simplicity and wanted to return to the ideals of the Greeks. Therefore, the Classical time period is characterized by clear structural clarity, simplicity, smoothness, and symmetry. However, though the works took a step back from the grand movement of the Baroque era, the composers and artists of the Classical time period did lay out a tuneful and elegant style in their music and art. Out of the Classical era came many renowned artists and composers, two of those whom are artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and composer Ludwig van Beethoven (“NYU”).

It is always interesting to know how a singular topic can be treated so differently by two different artists. There is not only the more obvious difference of the techniques that have been employed, but there is also the difference in the way they perceive the topic. There is also the era and the region and influence of their background which has a direct impact on the work of Art that they produce. In this paper, we will try to develop an understanding regarding the difference that exist between a work that was developed in the Renaissance Period and one that came out in the Italian Baroque. The paper will try to find the ground on which they coincide and those on which they differ from each other.

The Renaissance period occurred from 1400-1600. It can be separated into third smaller periods. The early, middle, and the late period, but for the sake of this paper, they will be referred to as stages to avoid confusion. This paper will compare two composers one from the early stage and another from the late stage. The early stage composer will be John Dunstable, and the late stage composer will be Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The purpose of this paper is to compare these two composers’ composition style through the analysis of two of their works.

Music is constantly changing. The Baroque period (1600-1750) and the Classical period (1750-1820) have both differences and similarities in elements such as form, texture, and dynamics. I will be comparing the first movement of Spring from the Four Seasons composed by Antonio Vivaldi and the first movement of Symphony No. 5 in C minor by Ludwig van Beethoven. I will construct a stylistic comparison of the two compositions and their musical stylings with regard to the periods of music of which they belong.

The Renaissance and Baroque era entailed very different characteristics, due to the Renaissance composers writing more freely and being more individual then those of the Baroque era where they followed more ‘rules’ and experimented less. This essay will show the difference in two pieces by different composers, even though they were written less than a century apart.

The scientific revolution is traditionally considered to be framed between 1543—the year of On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres by Nicolaus

This work was composed during the Classical period, 1750- 1820. One aspect of the classical music style beign applied to this work includes the reoccurance of two or more contrasting themes. Another is the use of short and clearly defined musical phrases. Lastly, this piece, on a purely musical level, was simply more to hum along to. This type of melody took over the complex polyphony of the Baroque period.

The “first practice” was just the style of vocal polyphony that was established in writing by Zarlino. The “second practice” was just Claudio Monteverdi’s way of being adventurous. He said that the first practice was music that the text prevailed, and that the second practice the text overpowered the music. In Monteverdi’s cruda amarilli he demonstrates the use of his second practice. Since Monteverdi used this second practice Composers start to see instrumental music as a different medium from vocal music and because of this they started to see them separately as two components, now borrow vocal idioms in instrumental writing, and vice versa. While trying to express the affections in man, they wanted to bring about the arousal of emotions like excitement, broadness, being a hero, and wonder. While doing this they also focused on a new idea of basso continuo which was a concentration of the bass where the chord was structured on the bass, and later the inversions became known as figured bass. With this new bass a new contrapuntal system was used where the melodic lines now had to fit into the pattern of chords set up by the continuo.

In 1600 a new style of music began to evolve, this form of music was

First of all, one of the most important characteristics of music in this period was the increased emotional expression. During the Renaissance, emotions of