Renaissance Art and Music - Essay Example

Renaissance Art and Music Introduction The term Renaissance is originally a French word whose literal meaning is rebirth, has been applied metaphorically to a wide variety of phenomena ranging from an experience in the life history of an individual to the characterization of a culture of an entire epoch [6]. As a proper noun, Renaissance is usually applied to the civilization of Europe, particularly in Italy in the period from the 14th through the 16th centuries [6]. This usage implies not only that European civilization during these centuries enjoyed a particularly brilliant cultural outburst, but also that this age marks a decisive turn in historical evolution, the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Times. The two principal components of Renaissance style are the following: 1. a revival of the classical forms originally developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and 2. an intensified concern with secular life-interest in humanism and assertion of the importance of the individual [4]. The Renaissance period in art history corresponds with the beginning of the great Western age of discovery and exploration, when a general desire developed to examine all aspects of nature and the world. During the Renaissance, artists were no longer regarded as mere artisans, as they had been in the medieval past, but for the first time were seen as independent personalities, comparable to poets and writers. They sought new solutions to formal and visual problems, and many of them were also devoted to scientific experimentation. In this context, mathematical or linear perspective was developed, a system in which all objects in a painting or in low-relief sculpture are related both proportionally and rationally. As a result, the painted surface was regarded as a window on the natural world, and it became the task of painters to portray this world in their art. Consequently, painters began to devote themselves more rigorously to the rendition of landscape-the careful depiction of trees, flowers, plants, distant mountains, and cloud-filled skies. Artists studied the effect of light out-of-doors and how the eye perceives the diverse elements in nature. They developed aerial perspective, in which objects become increasingly less distinct and less sharply coloured as they recede from the eye of the viewer [4]. Northern painters, especially those from Flanders and the Netherlands, were as advanced as Italian artists in landscape painting and contributed to the innovations of their southern contemporaries by introducing oil paint as a new medium. Although portraiture also developed as a specific genre in the mid-15th century, Renaissance painters achieved the greatest latitude with the history, or narrative, picture, in which figures located within a landscape or an architectural environment act out a specific story, taken either from Classical mythology or Judaeo-Christian tradition. Within such a context, the painter was able to show men, women, and children in a full range of postures and poses, as well as the subjects' diverse emotional reactions and states. The Renaissance was also a period of avid exploration; ships set sail in search of new routes to Asia, which resulted in the discovery and eventual colonization of North and South America. Painters, sculptors, and architects were driven by a similar sense of adventure and the desire for greater knowledge and new solutions; Leonardo da Vinci, like Christopher Columbus, discovered whole new worlds. This paper aims to define the characteristics of visual art and music during the renaissance through the use of examples, know a little about the artists of the artworks which were used as examples for this paper as well as to compare the works selected as examples in terms of the elements of art. In so doing, the paper will establish that renaissance art, however old and different the world it originated from is still continued to be regarded as timeless and valuable pieces in modern day art. Body Renaissance Art is any type of art produced in Europe in the historical period called the Renaissance. Broadly considered, the period covers the 200 years between 1400 and 1600. The same applies to renaissance music. The Renaissance of the arts coincided with the development of humanism, in which scholars studied and translated philosophical texts. The use of classical Latin was revived and often favored at this time. Renaissance Art Painting is one of the chief expressions of the 15th and the 16th centuries. The "re-birth" which the terms refer to is the revival of classicism, but while this is an important element, particularly in Italy, the spirit of age is more inclusive than this. A new joy in existence for its own sake, as opposed to the transcendental values and spiritual orientation of the Middle Ages, is every where felt. Other general characteristics are experimentation, individualism, realism, love of material beauty, and versatility on the part of its creators. The high renaissance in the field of painting centers in Florence and Rome. Rome deals with the great dramas of the creation of the physical world, the creation, temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, the story of the deluge and Noah, surrounded by the mighty figures of the prophets and Sibyls, the triumphs of the Jews and many decorative nudes who add to the energy, humanism and symbolic content of the whole [4]. Medium and elements are altogether the materials the artists use are creating a work of art. The distinction between them is easy to see but hard to define. Both answer the question: What is it made of but from different points of view. If, for instance we say that a building is made of brick and stone, we are talking of the medium; if we say it is made of right angles and vertical lines, we are talking of the elements. If we say that a piece of music is played in the horn, the oboe or the piano, we are talking of the medium; if we say that it is fast or slow, or that it has a good tune or a catchy rhythm, we are talking of the elements. The medium is the physical means through which we can come into contact with a work of art, while elements are it qualities or properties. Let's take Line for example. Line is an element of visual art. It is the simplest, most primitive and most universal means for creating visual art. Lines always have direction and it is always active; just like in El Greco's (1541-1614) 'Purification of the Temple'. This is a painting where in the interest is centered on Christ and the trades people who are being driven away. The lines made by their arms and bodies are predominantly diagonal, meeting at acute angles. Diagonal lines are lines of action [7]. They meet at sharp angles from jagged lines that are harsh and unpleasant; they connote confusion disturbance, lightning, battle, war, and sudden death [7]. As for the colors in el Greco's painting, most of the colors are warm, like bronze-like brown hues and grays and light brown colors for the skin. The only contrasting color is the color red which is only used once - only to color Jesus' robe, with a 'metallic-like' black color of cloth around his waist [8]. We all know that red is a powerful color, which might be the reason why it is chosen to color Jesus' robe. If you look at the painting, your eyes will be automatically drawn to the center (where Jesus is positioned) before your eyes travel to other areas of the painting. Renaissance Music The 14th century, which marked the end of the Middle Ages, proved to be a favorable start to the evolution of music. Its outstanding traits, the awakening interest in nature, man and life on earth were faithfully reflected in the mirror of music [2]. A sophisticated secular music arose alongside and often above religious music; rhythm grew ever more complicated; realism and descriptiveness appeared, as they did in painting and poetry. The chapels of Italian princes are the leading bodies of Renaissance music. For many years, the great composers from the north often spent decades of their lives in Rome or Venice, Florence or Mantua, while Italy absorbed in giving to the world the glorious treasures of her visual arts, did not produce musicians of the highest rank; and yet, the general atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance which the masters from the north imbibed at the courts of the pope and the Medici, the Este, and the Sforza, changed their traditional ways. The Gothic spirit of the north, complex and angular, yielded to the new taste from Italy, to rounded lines, to restful balance, and to limpid simplicity [2]. In Music, the counterpart of line is melody. Melody is any succession of single tones which, by virtue of being placed sequentially, give a sense of continuity. The two leading 14th-century composers were Guillaume de Machaut and Francesco Landini (c. 1325-1397). The preservation of their works in exquisite manuscripts reflects the esteem in which they were held by their contemporaries and successors. Their respective outputs are indicators of the popularity of the motet and formes fixes in France and, in Italy, of the madrigal (not to be confused with the 16th-century type) and ballata. Machaut is also the first known composer of a complete polyphonic setting of the Ordinary of the Mass and was a poet of considerable standing in his day. His works are characterized by a refined application of isorhythm and syncopation that sometimes leads to his music being described as intellectual or angular. This is less than fair since his compositions are always sensitive to the text and exude a joyous delight in the opportunities for vocal display. By comparison, Landini is justly praised for his flowing melodic style and more gracious rhythmic manners. In a real sense his music rehearses some of the features of later Italian bel canto style. From 1325 a growing number of keyboard arrangements of vocal compositions (including some by Vitry in the Robertsbridge Codex) represent the beginnings of a tradition which culminates in 15th-century collections such as the Buxheim Organ Book (1470). Music of the 15th century was to draw heavily on the techniques and structures of the Ars Nova period. In England, particularly, the development of a richer harmonic idiom reached fruition in the Mass settings and motets of Leonel Power (1370/85-1445), John Dunstable, and others included in the Old Hall manuscript (copied in the early 15th century). The synthesis of national styles which coincided with the establishment of the Mass Cycle as a major art form in Europe (1430-1470) was stimulated to a large extent by the popularity and influence of English music on the continent. The most conservative form in which Machaut wrote was the lai, which had been cultivated by the troubadours and trouvres since about 1200. Although 4 of Machaut's 19 lais are polyphonic, with two or three voices singing independent parts, the remainder are monophonic, with a single, perhaps unaccompanied, vocal line. There is no fixed poetic form, and this freedom is mirrored in the music, with successive sections using different metres and melodic material, giving the impression of a large through-composed structure rather than a strophic one. Of the 33 virelais Machaut set to music, 25 are monophonic. The strong rhythm, open melody, and short, clearly defined verses of a virelai such as Douce Dame Jolie suggest the origins of the form in dance. The later 2-part virelais (and one, Tres Bonne et Belle, in 3 parts) are more complex rhythmically as well as harmonically, but they are still characticerized by their melodic strength and regular phrase-lengths. The graceful polyphonic ballades and rondeaux were also influential in setting European secular song style for the next century: a high, sung melody accompanied by two or three lower parts, which may have been instrumental or vocal [5]. Some ballades are clearly intended for all-vocal performance, since each line is set to a separate text, a feature that reached fruition in the motets. The ballades often feature elaborate syncopation, and the word-setting is more melismatic than in the virelais. The rondeaux are conservative in poetic form, but the rhythmic grace, melodic freshness, and harmonic sophistication of a rondeau such as Rose, Liz, Printemps, Verdure make them among Machaut's most delightful works [5]. All of his 23 motets, for 3 or 4 voices, are sung to 2 or 3 different texts simultaneously: 6 have all-Latin texts, often of liturgical origin, while 3 are to entirely French texts, generally Machaut's own, and 14 are bilingual (all but one having two French and one Latin text) [5]. The subjects of the texts are often subtly related, with, for instance, the French verse addressing a beloved lady while the Latin text speaks of devotion to the Virgin Mary. The Latin tenor parts, and often the other parts, are isorhythmic in structure-that is, they are based on independent and overlapping melodic and rhythmic cycles, creating a complex texture of interlocking parts. Machaut's four-part Messe de Notre Dame (he was the first composer to write for a four-voice texture) is the earliest known complete polyphonic setting of the mass by a single composer (earlier mass cycles still surviving in manuscript are each by groups of composers whose individual movements were assembled by the scribes copying the manuscript). Also isorhythmic, it is monumental and austere, with driving rhythms and clashing dissonances, held together by the consistent use of plainsong melodies in the tenor parts, and a recurring melodic motif used as a bridge between sections [5]. In 1477, the theorist Johannes Tinctoris spoke of the recent emergence of a new art in music, the "fount and origin" of which were the English composer John Dunstable and the Burgundian Guillaume Dufay. Martin Le Franc, in his poem Le Champion Des Dames (1440-1442), had also spoken of a new style adopted by Dufay and his contemporary, Gilles Binchois, following Dunstable, a so-called "contenance angloise" distinguished by a sweeter use of consonances and, by inference, a tempering of the "mathematical" techniques qualities of Early Music in the High Middle Ages [5]. Dunstable and Dufay surely exploited medieval constructional procedures-both wrote isorhythmic motets-but did so within new sonic frameworks defined by triadic harmony and clearly articulated tonal centers, and to new expressive ends. With the generation of composers after Dufay, most notably the Flemings Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht, medieval principles of cantus-firmus construction (in which a pre-existing plainsong melody is heard in the slow-moving tenor part) became an alternative within a broader range of compositional techniques. Instead, the most distinctive style of Renaissance music is imitative polyphony, where all the voices move at the same speed and share in motivic development by combining points of imitation in a way later known as fugue. The Missa Pange Lingua by Josquin Desprez, perhaps the greatest composer of the High Renaissance, takes a plain song not as a long-note cantus firmus but instead as a source of melodic ideas treated imitatively through all the voices. This new way of conceiving and controlling musical space was taken up with enthusiasm by the post-Josquin generation, reaching a classical peak in the sacred music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina-his plainchant-based Missa de Beata Virgine (published in 1570) uses the same technique-and it lasted, if with an increasing sense of archaicism, through the 17th and 18th centuries. Biography of the Artists El Greco (which is Spanish for the word 'The Greek') was born Kyriakos Theotokopoulos, in the island of Crete off the coast of Greece [1]. El Greco did not feel like a citizen in Crete, where he was born. He was a foreigner in Venice and in Rome, where he lived for some years, and in Spain, his adopted home. In his early twenties he left the island of Crete and went off to Venice to study art under the instruction of the painter Titian. El Greco came to be known as a strange, unpredictable and religious young man. He was one of the greatest artists if the Spanish school, best known for his religious paintings. After leaving Venice, he went to Rome where he was involved in a great controversy. The pope had asked another great artist Michaelangelo to clothe the nude pictures in his painting The Last Judgment, one of the famous series of paintings in the Sistine Chapel; which Michaelangelo refused. El Greco said that to put an end to the argument, the paintings can be destroyed and he himself could paint others just as good; because of this attack on the great work of Michaelangelo, opinion raged against El Greco, and he was forced to leave Rome [1]. He settled in Spain in 1577 and much of his work were influenced by Tinoretto, Raphael, Durer, Michaelangelo, and the Mannerists such as Parmigianino. Guillaume de Machaut is a pre-eminent French composer of early music, and a leading poet. He was the chief exponent of the musical modernizing movement known as the Ars Nova [3]. Born in Machaut in the Champagne district, he was clerk of the diocese of Reims and served as secretary to John of Bohemia, and then, after the latter's death at Crcy in 1346, to different princes of France and of Navarre [3]. He ended his days as a canon of Reims Cathedral. Unlike his contemporaries, he was capable of great originality, notably in his handling of metrical forms. He established the musical and poetic rules for the lai, the virelai, the chant royal, the rondeau, and the ballade, all forms which survived robustly into the next century and beyond, finding their highest expression in the works of the 15th-century poet Franois Villon [3]. Indeed, although his contemporaries acknowledged his supremacy as a poet, it is as a musician that he is now largely honored. Conclusion The renaissance has indeed been a period of rebirth because people at that time were given a "second chance" to live life again. Along with this chance is the realization of the importance of appreciating life and the environment. People were able to have an identity of their own as they were recognized according to what they do best, just like the painters and the musicians. Although, the period is a time of rebirth, still many of its influences, both in visual art and music, comes from religion. Until today, even how old the art pieces of renaissance artists both in visual art and music, their works are still highly regarded and served as guides and models of aspiring artists today. This is manifested in how these new artists study the life and works of renaissance artists and sometimes compare their works to what the young ones of today have created. Truly, renaissance pieces, in art visual art and music, are timeless for until now it has still been considered to be timeless and priceless works of art. Bibliography 1. "El Greco." The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia Groiler Incorporated New York. Vol. 7, p. 330. 1982 2. "Early Music." The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia. Groiler Incorporated New York. Vol. 12, pp. 522 -524. 1982. 3. "Art." Illustrated Dictionary of Essential Knowledge, pp. 124 and 144. Reader's Digest Berkley Square House, Berkley Square, London. 1995. 4. "Painting." Encyclopedia Britannica. The Treasury of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Penguin Group: New York, New York. 1992, pp. 219-227 5. "Renaissance Music." The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia. Groiler Incorporated New York. Vol. 16, pp. 172-174. 1982. 6. "Renaissance." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 11 Apr 2008, 17:46 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Apr 2008 . 7. Dudley, L. et al. "The Elements of the Visual Arts." The Humanities, pp.214-215. McGraw Hill, Inc. USA 8. "El Greco." The Shock of the Old. Art Museums. The City Review. Retrieved: 14 April 2008, from Read More