One more quick one
I realize my last post is almost an utter and total derail of the thread. To atone for that, there is one thing I remember that is pertinent to the church dictating what music should sound like.
In the 15th century it became common for composers of sacred music to use a secular tune as a "cantus firmus" or fixed tune, usually in an inner voice where you couldn't even tell what it was. So you'd have a tune like L'homme arme in the tenor, with a nice Kyrie all around it. This became incredibly ingenious, almost like a little cipher or crossword puzzle only intelligible to the other composers or the choristers.
After the Council of Trent, this was highly frowned upon and so Palestrina, for example, was a bit of a throwback to a simpler sort of church music without so much artifice, or reference to secular tunes.
Early Reformation-era church music in England was also inspired by a desire to remove the "tennis plaie" from the worship service, so austerity was back in style and this came across to the Puritan colonies in North America. But the high Baroque Lutheran music in Germany, like Bach, seemed OK with just about anything.
There. Back on the rails. I'm not an expert, so I apologize for any over-simplifications or factual errors here.
I realize my last post is almost an utter and total derail of the thread. To atone for that, there is one thing I remember that is pertinent to the church dictating what music should sound like.
In the 15th century it became common for composers of sacred music to use a secular tune as a "cantus firmus" or fixed tune, usually in an inner voice where you couldn't even tell what it was. So you'd have a tune like L'homme arme in the tenor, with a nice Kyrie all around it. This became incredibly ingenious, almost like a little cipher or crossword puzzle only intelligible to the other composers or the choristers.
After the Council of Trent, this was highly frowned upon and so Palestrina, for example, was a bit of a throwback to a simpler sort of church music without so much artifice, or reference to secular tunes.
Early Reformation-era church music in England was also inspired by a desire to remove the "tennis plaie" from the worship service, so austerity was back in style and this came across to the Puritan colonies in North America. But the high Baroque Lutheran music in Germany, like Bach, seemed OK with just about anything.
There. Back on the rails. I'm not an expert, so I apologize for any over-simplifications or factual errors here.