The Relevance and Application of Heinrich Wolfflin's Principles of Art History to the Study and Teaching of Choral/Vocal Music from the Renaissance and Baroque

Heinrich Wolfflin, a German art historian, published highly influential studies of Renaissance and Baroque art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His classic work Principles of Art History (1915) strongly influenced modern art history in its systematic approach to formal analysis. In demonstrating that the Renaissance artist in general had a very different form of vision from the Baroque artist, he adduced a system of five contrasting polarities that distinguish the separate styles. These can be extrapolated to music of the period and beyond, though neither Wolfflin nor apparently anyone else has previously done so. Wolffin's five polarities were (1) Linear vs. Painterly, (2) Plane vs. Recession, (3) Closed Form vs. Open Form, (4) Multiplicity vs. Unity, and (5) Absolute Clarity vs. Relative Clarity (e.g., 'clearness vs. unclearness'). These will be illustrated with slides from the period, and Wolfflin's terminology will be translated into musical terms, then illustrated with choral and vocal musical examples.