Christmas Music

[Wake-up!]

Renaissance Christmas
Renaissance Period started around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and ended around 1600. Music was increasingly freed from medieval constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation. On the other hand, rules of counterpoint became more constrained, particularly with regard to treatment of dissonances. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression. Composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists.




Baroque Christmas
Baroque Period music was composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, now widely studied, performed, and heard. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key. During the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. Baroque concerts were typically accompanied by a basso continuo group which consisted of chord-playing instrumentalists such as harpsichordists and lute players improvising chords from a figured bass part while a group of bass instruments (viol, cello, double bass) played the bassline. A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite. While the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed for listening, not for accompanying dancers.




Classical Christmas
Classical Period is generally accepted as being between about the years 1730 and approximately 1820. Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic, using a clear melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment, but counterpoint was by no means forgotten, especially later in the period. It also makes use of style galant which emphasized light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur. Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before as the orchestra increased in size, range, and power.





Jazz Christmas



Acoustic Guitar Christmas