In music, as in all the arts, "depth" is a subjective quality dependent on how the audience personally reacts to a given work. Some commentators and music historians have in fact regarded the Baroque era as a period in which composers began more openly expressing emotion. We need to remember, however, that every age expresses itself differently and that our responses are often conditioned by ideas and expectations that are independent of what the artists—whether in music, literature, or painting—intended or felt about their own works. The composers of the medieval and Renaissance periods did not believe that their works lacked "depth" or that a future age would be able to express emotion better or more fully than they could, although this is precisely what some critics and commentators of more recent times have asserted.
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In music, as in all the arts, "depth" is a subjective quality dependent on how the audience personally reacts to a given work. Some commentators and music historians have in fact regarded the Baroque era as a period in which composers began more openly expressing emotion. We need to remember, however, that every age expresses itself differently and that our responses are often conditioned by ideas and expectations that are independent of what the artists—whether in music, literature, or painting—intended or felt about their own works. The composers of the medieval and Renaissance periods did not believe that their works lacked "depth" or that a future age would be able to express emotion better or more fully than they could, although this is precisely what some critics and commentators of more recent times have asserted.