The western tradition of music has its origins in the chant tradition of the early Christian era. The monophonic music of chant dominated the middle ages, and included the composition of sequences and tropes. In the high Middle Ages, organum emerged, thus introducing polyphonic textures into liturgical music. By the thirteenth century, the motet became a seminal polyphonic composition and included liturgical and secular texts as well as a chant cantus firmus. In the thirteenth …showed first 75 words of 1629 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1629 total…sought a general, unified effect of pictorial representation or architectural composition, increasing the dramatic force and physical presence of a work of art and gathering its energies and forming a controlled equilibrium. Because the essential characteristic of High Renaissance art was its unity beyond the reach of rational knowledge or technical skill the High Renaissance style was destined to break up as soon as emphasis was shifted to favor any one element in the composition.