Considerations related to performance practice

Considerations related to performance practice

Listening to music for its own sake, apart from ritual or storytelling, is a recent historical development. There have always been impromptu song and dance; and performances of music in home, church, and theatrical productions have a long history. But there was no public opera house until 1637 when the first one opened in Venice; the first public concerts for which admission was charged appeared in London in 1672. During the next 50 years there were beginnings in Germany and France also, but the modern concert was not a significant feature of musical life until the late 18th century.

Of the forms that have characterized distinct periods of musical history, it is sufficient to remark here that the chief Renaissance forms—mass, motet, the polyphonic chanson, and madrigal—were allied to texts that strongly influenced their structure. Instrumental music was for the most part in the service of the voice, though instrumental church compositions, dances, and chansons arranged for organ were not uncommon. A strong alliance between voices and instruments has continued into the present, with musical theatre, the art song, and religious music. Instrumental music as a separate genre emerged in the 16th century, gaining considerable momentum in the 17th through a variety of idiomatic pieces. Increased attention to technical fluency was accompanied by greater complexity and sophistication in the instruments themselves. In response to stylistic demands for greater resonance and power, the modern forms of the violin appeared in the late 16th century, only gradually supplanting the earlier viols. The harpsichord did not finally yield to the pianoforte until the 18th century. The once-prevalent idea that early stringed and keyboard instruments were primitive precursors of their modern counterparts has been effectually demolished by research in medieval and Renaissance music and by dedicated performers, who seek to restore the sounds and spirit of those eras.