Bach music and music of the Renaissance

[brettkun]

Sometimes I feel like there are wrong accidentals in the music of Bach.  I especially feel this is the case in music of the renaissance. Anybody have any other comments about this? So what history is trying to tell me is that the church modes were used and instead we get landini cadences, are the historians right in saying that this is the kind of music that poeple enjoyed. That Guidos hand and music in general only had ut, re , mi ,fa ,so, la. Sorry this must be a subject for music history not piano sorry if it is.

[abell88]

I had to research Renaissance performance practice for a course many years ago -- one of the interestings things was that they didn't necessarily notate all their accidentals -- musicians were expected to know when to sharp certain notes, for example. So some of the accidentals you see in a modern edition may have been put there by the editor -- hopefully someone who knows the rules!

It's also true that our ears are basically just tuned to major and minor, so some of the modes sound unsatisfying or incomplete to us...our loss, I think.