Reflective Commentary of Part Five:

This section of the course provided somewhat of a challenge due to the breadth of information and the long periods that fell under the umbrella of Baroque, Renaissance and Ars Nova.  Covering some four hundred years of composers, techniques and compositions was very hard to absorb!

However, perhaps the largest point I have taken from this section, is that these periods provided the springboard for true musical creativity and relationship between melody and harmony.  A great deal of styles, genres and forms appeared during these periods from motets and cantatas to suites and sonatas and legendary composers such as Bach, Handel and Palestrina all added music inventions which have become commonplace in modern music.  In many ways these periods could be seen as the precursor to all proceeding movements including the classical and romantic periods of later centuries.

My exploration into the instrumentation of these periods led me to a much greater understanding of the brass and string sections, and the developments that have formed today’s modern orchestra.  I was particularly interested in learning about the abilities of the lute, as the guitar also plays a prominent role in my musical knowledge.  However, the most important point to take from my research was the limitations placed upon players due to the manufacturing processes at this time.  In earlier studies I discovered that the Industrial Revolution played a large role in the mass production and uniformity of instruments, but instruments in the Baroque, Renaissance and Ars Nova period would likely have been handcrafted and would therefore never be perfectly pitched to one another.  Works such as Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier began the necessary steps to produce the diatonic system that we all know and rely on today. 

It seems that this was a time of both secular and scared compositions with many composers holding employment with churches, courts and wealthy individuals.   Looking at both earlier compositions with a more choral influences, and later examples which deliver a orchestral importance, has led me to further appreciate how different styles and techniques were adopted to fit with each employer.  Pieces such as Palestrina’s masses deliver a very clear, sacred, awe-inspiring feeling, whilst works such as Bach’s Orchestral Suite in D Major delivers a deeper sense of emotional range and contrast.  

Throughout all sections of this course, I have been studying the dissemination of music during each period.  Online sites such as sheetmusicdirect.com dominate today’s printed music, whilst previous eras relied upon mass printing techniques and industrial advances to aid its widespread use.  It appears from my studies that the Renaissance period was perhaps at the beginning of the formal use of ‘sheet music’ as composers began to take influence from their contemporaries and replicate and embellish their compositions.  This period also seemed to be the beginning of the system of patronage, of which I was able to draw significant comparisons to our current system of musical employment in the ‘popular’ genre.

It was my final assignment, the study of Bach’s influence upon Procol Harum’s 1967 hit A Whiter Shade of Pale, which enabled me to see how the techniques of these periods have remained a constant feature of music throughout history.  Drawing significant parallels between the instrumentation, ornamentation and contrapuntal techniques of A Whiter Shade of Pale, demonstrates the infamous power of the musical advances of the baroque era and composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach.