Renaissance vs Pop Music - Essay Example

Critical Analysis of Renaissance and Pop Music Number Renaissance versus Pop Music The Renaissance Erabegan in Italy and subsequently spread across Europe between 1450 and 1600. It was an era in which economic activities took a more modern style in Italian towns such as Florence and Venice. The new environment buoyed by self-confidence influenced people to establish a new kind of art which was less dictated by religion or medieval culture. Similarly, music artists discovered a new way of presenting their composition and framing their content without interference from the then two major centers of influence. By contrast, pop music of the 20th and 21st centuries is all-encompassing and highly enriched with sacred and secular themes that appeal to most people in society. This paper critically analyses “Trionfo di Bacco” and “The One That You Love,” which are Renaissance music and Pop music respectively. Renaissance Music versus Pop Music The term “renaissance” refers to the rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman classical culture during the 15th and 16th centuries. Ongaro (2003) noted that during this period, the renaissance of music was mainly recognized in the creation of vocal polyphony as evidenced in “Trionfo di Bacco”. Subsequently, improvements in the use of instruments helped to expand music performance into wider acceptance than had been experienced previously. From around 1570s, certain Italian academics began to support the use of classical Greek treatises in music. By the early 17th century, these efforts had influenced substantially the creation of monody and opera music in Florence. By contrast, pop music is highly structured even where innovative aesthetics are used to blur the lines of standardization. As such, Brown (2013) noted that structuring of pop songs based on regular blueprints may range from the most general qualities to the modest of them all. In general, standardized qualities evidenced in Air Supply’s “The One That You Love", for instance, exhibits popular body movement, standardized vocals and instrumentation. As Spinetti (2005) said, the ideal pop song maintains the harmonic pillars of vocals and instruments throughout its playing, which also lends credence to its standardization. This scheme underlines the most abstract of harmonic facts irrespective of its source. Pop artists are driven by the concept that complications bear no adverse impacts. As such, irrespective of the kind of aberrations included in the pop music, it will eventually find its place in the same popular experience and gain acceptance. “Trionfo di Bacco” versus “The One That You Love” Like the pop “The One That You Love,” Renaissance “Trionfo di Bacco” is mainly centered on love and romance in an environment where great interconnections between science and art preoccupied artists like it has been during the contemporary pop music era. The Renaissance music has a regularized musical scale, which was a way in which the artist expressed the correlations between beats and human emotional sentiments. The music, according to Renaissance philosophers, was the audible proof of unseen classical forces of romance (Ongaro, 2003). As Spinetti (2005) noted, “The One That You Love” is similarly standardized just to control the various aspects of the form including the break and dirty notes, complimenting the smooth romantic theme it expresses. The structuring of the music, however, varies a bit from the outline and deviates even further from the Renaissance music. Unlike “Trionfo di Bacco,” the structuring of “The One That You Love” is not as clear but buried under a veneer of artistic effects of the composer and production. This contrasting form of the pop music structure prepares the listeners for preliminary effect of the song immediately it begins to play, and defeats the more boring Renaissance music, albeit in modern times. The polyphonic tune of “Trionfo di Bacco” is the result of using more melodic lines as opposed to the three or four used by medieval composers. As such, the music meets the primary objective of the Renaissance era, which was to integrate the impact of the music with the romance themes contained in the text (Anderson, 2001). The music shows clear imitative polyphony as integrated seamlessly with vocals entering immediately after another with similar melodic features. By contrast, “The One That You Love” is catchy, brief, simple and harmonious. From simple dances, to easy listening and understanding of the romantic text, the pop music has infiltrated the musical arena since the 1980s by virtue of its general acceptability as opposed to the rediscovery of love in “Trionfo di Bacco.” As Brown (2013) noted, the wide acceptability of the pop music is attributed to the general societal theme love and the huge influence it played in the 1980s’ modern society. Part of the reason for the evolution of the pop music may be attributed to the equally evolving popular culture of the 20th century which was influenced by globalization and the need to forge universally acceptable theme of love. Similarly, “Trionfo di Bacco” imitative polyphony of the Renaissance era created a sense of unity and consensus of various philosophies which were rather disparate on other platforms (Anderson, 2001). The style also ensured the realization of aesthetic accord and the balance of the music in the same way as Renaissance visual art. Both pieces of art have harmonic accord even as they incline towards a culture of secularism, which became popular during the sunset years of the Renaissance era and weathered cultural influences of the centuries into the better-standardized instrument-based pop music of the 20th century. Renaissance influences on pop music As Anderson (2001) suggested, “Trionfo di Bacco” had tremendous influences on the “The One That You Love,” even though they were composed four centuries apart. The clearest influence of the Renaissance music on pop music lies in the humanist qualities of both pieces of art. Humanism qualities centered on love underscores the essence of human life and social activities as well as the social beliefs that human beings hold such as human temporary existence on earth. In addition, the same way the Renaissance music deviated from the previously massive influence of religion and the Church in particular, is the same way “The One That You Love” is largely secular songs (Anderson, 2001). As such, the Renaissance artist influenced the predilection of the modern pop composer and the audience to explore new artistic concepts, which would project the theme love of love in a better way by enhancing the aesthetics (Spinetti, 2005). For instance, the replacement of the simpler classical madrigals by more complex forms of songs with four to six vocal parts of “Trionfo di Bacco” substantially influenced the composition of “The One That You Love” and its complex choruses (Anderson, 2001). It can be argued that the advent of instrumental “Trionfo di Bacco” has influenced the development of creative beats, percussions and technology-aided performances of the 1980s’ pop music. As such, the simultaneous use of many different instruments in a harmonious way in the modern pop music can be traced to the Renaissance music. The then artists initially experimented with instruments that produced similar sounds before eventually integrating them later on. As such, “The One That You Love” perfected the art as evidenced in drums, guitar, piano, karaoke, different vocals and other instruments (Spinetti, 2005). Differences “The One That You Love” is an example of a pop which is the result of substantial evolution. As such, it is harder to pin-point the distinct qualities of the genre as compared to the Renaissance music (Ongaro, 2003).Other differences include: a) the pop music having a wider global appeal, rather than the narrow focus of the Renaissancemusic; b) unlike the less structured “Trionfo di Bacco”, “The One That You Love” has clear stanza-chorus structure; c) “Trionfo di Bacco” was mainly done for live audiences while “The One That You Love” is preferred in recorded version; d) “The One That You Love” has more dance-oriented beats and vocals while “Trionfo di Bacco” lacks these qualities; e) the pop music follows trends of the pop culture, while the Renaissance music rejuvenated the old Greco-Roman romance culture, and f) unlike the duller “Trionfo di Bacco”, “The One That You Love” is built around finer melodies and more attractive hooks such as choruses contrasting harmoniously with the verses. Conclusion The Renaissance era “Trionfo di Bacco” and the Pop culture “The One That You Love” are important cultural aspects that can be used to analyze the prevailing trends within the society at the time of their composition. Whereas the former music is mainly centered on the rejuvenation of the ancient Roman and Greek cultural ideology, the pop song is trendy; it was composed based on popular events romance in order to achieve a wide public appeal. Regardless, both pieces of music emphasize the importance of humanism and the use of diverse instruments to create harmony and the vital aesthetics. References Anderson, P.A., (2001). Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought New Americanists. Durham: Duke University Press. Brown, L.B., (2013). Can American Popular Vocal Music Escape the Legacy of Blackface Minstrelsy? Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism, 71(1), 91-100. Ongaro, G.M., (2003). Music of the Renaissance. New York: Greenwood Press. Spinetti, F., (2005). Open Borders. Tradition and Tajik Popular Music: Questions of Aesthetics, Identity and Political Economy. Ethnomusicology Forum, 14(2), 185-211. Read More