than sung) was a piece that showed off the
musician’s ability; the pavane was a slow
lament for the dead; and the allemande,
galliard, and courante were popular dance
forms. Musicians were given wide latitude
to improvise their parts; the best could
play elaborate free cadenzas while staying
within the limits of a strict system of har-
mony, counterpoint, and melodic progres-
sion. In England, many skilled composers
took up the Italian madrigal, a sung form
that relied on the texts of well-known son-
nets and other poetry.
In the late Renaissance composers be-
gan to simplify complex melodies and em-
phasize a single pure line, accompanied by
one or several lesser parts. Imitative coun-
terpoint allowed the composer a wider
range of melodic devices in order to show
off his skill at combining different voices
and instruments. This new freedom was
applied to sacred music, which could
change from po1yphonic to homophonic
(written in a single voice) and back again,
as the composer wished. Dissonance and
chromaticism—the use of notes not part
of the key scale—was tolerated and in the
work of some composers, notably Carlo
Gesualdo, strongly emphasized, causing
strange and surprising shifts in mood and
tenor.
In Venice, sacred music was often com-
posed for multiple choirs and groups of
instruments, laying the groundwork for
the classical symphony. Giovanni Pal-
estrina, a Roman composer, mastered the
difficult art of polyphony and wrote text-
books that instructed composers in this
art up to the twentieth century. A new
form of sung drama was taken up by many
skilled composers, notably the Italian
Claudio Monteverdi, whoseOrfeois con-
sidered by many to be the first opera. This
new form combined music, singing, and
dance in the presentation of a tragic or
comic play. The Venetian School influ-
enced music in the rest of Italy, as well as
Germany and France, while opera emerged
in the seventeenth century as a form that
brought music into direct competition
with the theater for the attention of a mass
audience.SEEALSO: des Prez, Josquin; Gesualdo,
CarloMuslims ...........................................
The Islamic conquest that began in the
early seventh century spread the new faith
from its home in Arabia to the north, east,
and west. At its height, the Muslim caliphs
(rulers) held both secular and sacred au-
thority over a realm stretching from north-
ern India and central Asia west to Persia,
Mesopotamia, the Levant, North Africa,
and Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal).
The campaigns between Christians and
Muslims in the Levant, known as the Cru-
sades, ended with the last Christian states
destroyed by the armies of the Mamluks.
The Mamluk dynasty, with its capital in
Cairo, Egypt, originated in a caste of sol-
diers. The Mamluks turned back the Chris-
tians as well as the Mongols, who in the
middle of the thirteenth century invaded
and destroyed Baghdad, the center of the
Abbasid caliphate. Cairo was the most
prominent center of learning in the Islamic
world, with the Tunisian scholar Ibn Khal-
dun who was the leading historian and
philosopher of this period.
The Mongols ruling in Iran and Iraq
were converted to Islam in the late thir-
teenth century. In the sixteenth century, a
new Safavid dynasty emerged in what was
ancient Persia. In India the Mughal Em-
pire was established in 1526 by Babur, a
Timurid prince of Kabul. The Mughal rul-
ers built their capital at Delhi and collectedMuslims