Instrumental music had quite a lush history, but until a certain moment composers did not consider instrumental music as an independent genre because in that time vocal music dominated in the world and the role of music instruments was to “support” the singer and prevent him from singing out of key.
For instrumental music it took 150 years to be recognized as an independent genre and independent subject. It happened thanks to 5 factors:
- Composers discovered the individuality of music instruments
- Dance popularity
- Lute versatility
- Invention of new instruments
- Composers’ musical experiments
As noted earlier, instrumental music existed long before the Renaissance, however, it wasn’t separated from vocal music. During Late Medieval and Early Renaissance period music instruments played same melody that the singer sang. Music instrument was not considered as a key instrument or individual component of music culture, it was kind of conductor which guided a singer and helped him being in right tonality. Most often accompaniment was played by such instruments like: organ, lute, viola.
Accompaniment started to sound differently closer to the Late Renaissance. He stopped being exactly like vocal melody, in fact he got his own melody. However, as before he must guide a singer. But more often instrumentalists insisted that a singer sang with several instruments and it was a beginning for the birth of vocal-instrumental ensembles.
Author: Alisa Holainen
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