this inflexibility. Many composers eased into the Baroque style by using both the Renaissance style and Baroque styles in their work: the older style was used for the traditional setting of church music while the newer style was used for secular·often vocal·music. Increasingly, audiences became more comfortable with the contrast that Baroque music offered over Renaissance music, however, and the newer style gained in popularity (Hanning).
As the Renaissance drew to a close, one outstanding event dominated the musical world, and later had a far-reaching effect on the development of style in literature, in the pictorial arts, in architecture and even in social life. This was the rise of opera, the logical evolution of the revival of the art of theatre which was ushered in by the Italian courts and was the outcome of the Renaissance desire to recreate classical Antiquity and actualize Hellenistic civilization. Opera originated in Florence, but acquired various characteristics of style and expression in Rome, Venice and Naples. It was the most effective vehicle of the new musical culture in Italy, and rapidly won recognition in other countries, where it almost always retained its original character, except in France, where it developed independently (Dorak).
Like the art and architecture styles that also carry the Baroque designation, Baroque music is characterized by contrasts. In Renaissance music, there is little change in dynamics, range or tempo. Baroque music is marked by changes not only in these areas·movements that are fast and slow, dynamics that range from soft to loud·but also by contrasts among the instruments themselves. It was during this period that composers began to write in the concerto style in which one instrument is contrasted with the rest of the orchestra. This grew out of the basso continuo concept, where a bass line is played continuously throughout the piece while other instruments "fill in" t...