Final answer:
The Renaissance period followed the Middle Ages in music, characterized by polyphonic style and various cultural influences from 1400 to 1600.
Step-by-step explanation:
The musical style period that directly followed the Middle Ages is the Renaissance. Renaissance music, written in Europe from around 1400 to 1600, marked the transition from medieval to early modern times. This era in music was characterized by the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school and was influenced by the rise of humanism, recovery of Greco-Roman culture, innovation and discovery, commercial enterprise, the emergence of a bourgeois class, and the Protestant Reformation.