How did sacred music evolve during the renaissance period?

Question

that is my question for my essay i would like to have a couple more points to write about. i have an idea but i think i need more information. anything would help thanks.

Answer 1

The composers couldn't recreate Roman or Greek classic styles of music, since they had no record of what they really sounded like.

So they applied their classicist values to medieval polyphonic styles.  They tried to be more intellectual, making the masses more complex and including musical stunts like setting the melody backwards, inverted, or both.  They also wrote too many parts, leading to a kind of musical muddiness.

Occasionally during the Renaissance, the Vatican would issue an edict against overly complex counterpoint in the masses--at which time, works by Palestrina and his ilk that were simple four-part first-degree counterpoint got popular for a time.

We don't get into extremely new developments in music until the Florentine Camarata and its homophonic, ideal-melodic ideas engendered the Baroque styles.