In the renaissance, building from the previous generations of music and

continuing in their paths to give each of the parts of music a more individualistic
personality. That is to say, that each part of the four parts in the range of the vocal
resulting in polyphony in contrast to the more homophonic texture of the baroque. From
Monteverdi’s 8 books of madrigals we see a change from stile antico to stile moderno,
which gave more emphasis to the text than to the music. This gave way to the idea that
text was king from which sprung the ideas of single affect, which so pervaded the
compositions of the 17th century that baroque music is easily distinguished. Pieces such as
the , Marais’ painful look at a gall bladder operation, and certain Scarlatti works all
demonstrate how music could be used to describe words, feelings, emotions. Emotions of
the 17th century were known as affects.
Instrumental music of the 17th century was heavily influenced by vocal music.
Froberger took lute music and transcribed it for harpsichord at a time when stile brise
was popular and the fashionable ‘in’ music thing of the day was to play the harpsichord
like a lute.
The echo effect found in Biagio Marini’s echo tunes from Willaert, Monteverdi,
and Gabrielli’s use of St. Mark’s Cathedral the idea of choir against choirs or in other
terms what we can call the echo effect, influenced much of the instrumental music of the
17th century.
Dancing is also, and has been since the foundation of human recreations, being an
inseparable part of music gave way to comparisons in the suite style found so often in
music of this period. The ouverture or opening being stately and pompous, with the lilted
dotted eighths connected to a 16th note was followed by fugal imitative sections born
from the ricecare of the old style. The musical form of the sonata developed from the
divisive sections of the canzona becoming a cantata to be sounded. The concerto in the
same vein, was born out of a desire to bring diverse factors,… together, a tutti.