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This animated film highlights each voice of the fugue visually. It has also been used in many film scores, both as diegetic and non-diegetic music. Conductor Leopold Stokowski arranged it for the opening scene of Disney’s original Fantasia (1940): Here it is in a scene from Sunset Boulevard (1950): Here it is in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954): In The Great…

The Florentine Camerata began meeting in the home of Count Giovanni de’Bardi in 1573. Not unlike the Council of Trent, these poets, musicians, and philosophers thought that polyphony had gone too far, and they hoped to return music to what they thought of as the pure style of the ancient Greeks. They believed (incorrectly, as we…

Contrary to what you may think, there was a great deal of play, creativity, and improvisation in the music of the Baroque era. Think about it: when your score basically just indicates the rhythm and gives an outline of some harmonic changes, the composer is leaving it up to you, the performer, to fill in…

What is basso continuo, and what does it do? Think about it this way. Basso continuo, which traditionally was made up of two instruments — a bass instrument like the viol, and a keyboard instrument like the harpsichord — was like a rhythm section. The continuo instruments kept the beat and outlined the harmonic changes.…

What is Baroque? It is anti–naturalistic. Unlike the aesthetics of the Renaissance, the art and music of the Baroque era do not attempt to imitate life or nature. Baroque religious painting was meant to be emotional and highly expressive, even theatrical. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church strove to show that Catholicism was more accessible to the…

Love, I depart, and I feel while I part, while I suffer and while I die, that I part from her who is my life, although she rejoices when my heart languishes. O incredible, endless harshness of the soul: her heart can die without feeling pain! Love pierces well my bitter pain and my sharp…

The most famous of the many lute songs composed by John Dowland (1563-1626). As performed and discussed by Sting: How does Dowland imitate in music the act of weeping? Why would this have been pleasurable for the performers and the audience?

Martin Luther called Josquin Desprez “Master of the Notes.” In this motet, Josquin uses imitative counterpoint: the soprano states the melody (the point of imitation), and the other voices enter one by one, singing the same pattern. Nevertheless, Martin Luther’s reforms sought, among other things, to simplify liturgical music. Luther composed “A Mighty Fortress is…

French miniature painting of the fall of Constantinople, 1453. The Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), priest, philosopher, and musician. Renaissance instruments. Mary Magdalene playing the lute (Flemish, 15th-century). Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels (Cimabue, c. 1290). Madonna of the Red Cherubim (Giovanni Bellini, c. 1485). Madonna and Child (Pietro Perugino,…

In 1994, an album of chants recorded in the 1970s by Spanish Benedictine Monks was a surprise bestseller. The album reached #3 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified double-platinum. Chant also figures in the soundtrack of the anime Vision of Escaflowne: And in the theme music of the Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved: And in…