conventional style-periodization and its attendant labels) actually brought about the loss of faith in
“Renaissance” styles and ideas, leading to their disintegration and the birth of the “Baroque.”
None of these pressures accomplished their evolutionary work suddenly. To account for each of them
it will be necessary once again to step back in time and renarrate the story of sixteenth-century music from
a new perspective. Breaking down a complex story of change into several perspectives is admittedly an
artificial analytical technique, and one not normally available to those who actually live through the
change in question.
Therein lies both the advantage and the disadvantage of retrospect. We can perform our dissection, if
we are lucky, to our satisfaction, and persuade ourselves that we understand the change better than those
who experienced it. But they are the ones who felt (or resisted) its necessity, suffered the losses, and
rejoiced in the gains. Our understanding is rationalized, articulate, and imaginary; theirs was immediate,
real, but inarticulable. The reconciliation of the two, as well as the resynthesis of all the different stories
our analytical perspectives entail, must take place in the reader’s mind.