Renaissance music

European music composed and performed roughly from 1400 to 1600. It is marked by increasingly intricate polyphony, broader instrumental practice, and changing sacred and secular forms.

Polyphony: Music in which multiple independent melodic lines sound simultaneously. Interweaving melodic lines became a defining texture of Renaissance composition.
Word painting: The use of musical gestures to depict or emphasize the meaning of words. Madrigal composers used it to make poetic images audible.
Motet: A polyphonic vocal composition, usually sacred in the Renaissance, set to a Latin text. The motet became a central vehicle for sacred polyphony.
Josquin des Prez: A Franco-Flemish composer whose vocal works circulated widely in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. His motets and masses became influential models for later composers.
Medieval music: European music composed and performed from the early Middle Ages through roughly the fifteenth century. Renaissance composers inherited medieval notation, chant, and polyphonic traditions while reshaping them.
Imitation (music): A compositional technique in which one voice repeats a melodic idea introduced by another. Imitative entries bind many motets and masses into coherent textures.
Mensural notation: A system of notation that represented musical pitch and measured note durations before modern notation. Its refinements enabled increasingly complex rhythms and ensemble parts.
Mass (music): A musical setting of some or all texts of the Roman Catholic Mass. Mass cycles brought large-scale compositional ambition into church worship.
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina: An Italian composer of sacred polyphony active in sixteenth-century Rome. His works came to exemplify a polished style of Catholic church music.
Baroque music: European music from roughly 1600 to 1750, associated with tonal harmony, basso continuo, and dramatic contrasts. Its new tonal and theatrical practices distinguish the era that followed Renaissance music.

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