The music of
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is probably the most archetypical Cinquecento music. He simplified some of the complexities of the music of the time, and advocated a more
homophonic style. He was partially reacting to the strictures of the
Council of Trent, which discouraged excessively complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text. He was the foremost member of the
Roman School, a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance into early Baroque eras. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches, stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive. In
Venice, from about 1534 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed, which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in the Basilica
San Marco di Venezia (see
Venetian School). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as the
Baroque musical era. In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closes, an extremely manneristic style develops. In secular music, especially in the
madrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extreme
chromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals of
Luzzaschi,
Marenzio, and
Gesualdo). The term
mannerism derives from art history. ==Literature==