Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the trend in musical development had been one of increasing complexity. To simple monophony were added intervals creating parallel organum, which developed into drone organum, which expanded musicians' harmonic vocabulary into three- and four-part polyphony, which continued to develop as more and more voices were added until composers began to think of different parts as chordal units rather than individual lines, creating the counterpoint of the Baroque Period.
In many ways, the artistic trends that now came about can be understood as a conscious halting of this development. Artists, architects, and musicians embraced a simpler and more elegant style that harkened back to ancient Greece and Rome even more closely than the Renaissance.
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