The Renaissance

Prelude The Renaissance1PreludeThe Renaissance was both a cultural movement and a historical period. Its chronological range and defining characteristics are matters of ongoing debate, but in music the term is conventionally applied to the period from about 1420 to 1600.2PreludeThe term Renaissancerebirth in Frenchwas coined by later historians to designate what they saw as an era marked by the revival, or rebirth, of attitudes and ideals rooted in classical antiquity. Many of the philosophical, technological, and artistic innovations of the Renaissance were inspired by the recovery of ancient works, particularly from Greece, that had for all practical purposes been lost to western Europe for almost a thousand years.3PreludeMedieval scholars were familiar with only scattered works of Plato and other Greek writers, and even then only in Latin translations; Aristotles works were better known but not in their original Greek. But Greek versions of the writings of these and many other ancient authors had been preserved to the east, in Islamic and Byzantine libraries, especially in and around the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey).4Continued.By the late 14th century, Western scholars were beginning to find and bring home many of these sources. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, a new wave of manuscripts arrived in the luggage of scholars seeking refuge in the West. This influx of ancient worksand the ideas that they containedcoincided with significant transformations in European society and its economy.5Growth of the Middle ClassBy the early 15th century, the population was rising again after the devastations of the Black Death. Increased trade and prosperity challenged feudal structures and promoted the growth of cities and city-states, regions ruled from a single urban center. Banks and insurance companies, which had first appeared toward the end of the medieval era, became increasingly common over the course of the 15th century.6Renaissance HumanismThe discovery of what was for Europeans a New World in 1492 opened up not only new territories but also new ways of thinking about the universe, prompting fundamental changes in the very perception of humanitys place in the world. The discovery of previously unknown but advanced civilizations like those of the Aztecs and Incas would help inspire emerging scientific theories that the earth was not the center of the universe.7HumanismThe sudden abundance of pre-Christian sources from classical antiquity introduced Western minds to yet another newor rather, very oldway of looking at the world. The ancient Greeks had measured the universe in terms of the human values and reason, and many scholars of the early 15th century, adopting this new outlook for themselves, created a philosophical movement known as humanism.8Renaissance humanists were committed to independent reasoning, careful study of the ancient classics in their original languages (particularly Greek), and a reliance on original sources rather than secondhand commentary about those sources. They also believed in the basic dignity of humankind. Humanists did not reject religionindeed, many of them were among the most eloquent advocates of the churchbut they sought understanding through a process guided as much by reason as faith.9Scholasticism vs HumanismHumanism was a sharp departure from the scholasticism that had dominated late medieval intellectual life. Scholasticism relied almost entirely on abstract thought and the accumulation of wisdom through disputation. Commentariesand commentaries on commentarieswere an important venue of scholastic thought, provided they came from the pens of acknowledged authorities. Scholasticism harbored deep suspicions about the reliability of the human senses and therefore had little place for empirical evidence or observation. Humanism, in contrast, combined reason with empirical evidence with results that often challenged the received wisdom of even the greatest authorities.10VernacularThe impact of humanism extended well beyond the fields of philosophy, theology, and science. Renaissance writers as a whole were deeply influenced by humanism and its efforts to explore the human mind. Following the lead of such late medieval figures as Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Geoffrey Chaucer, more and more writers began to produce works in the vernacularItalian, French, English and Spanishwhich in turn contributed to an ever-growing sense of national identity in the various regions of Europe.11Moveable TypeThe speed with which ideas could be disseminated in Renaissance Europe accelerated exponentially with the invention of movable type and the printing press in the mid-15th century. The significance of this new technology can scarcely be overstated. Before printing, the written word was scarce and remote. Even Bibles were a rarity. Manuscripts were expensive to produce and inconsistent in their texts; because they were produced by hand, now two manuscripts were identical, no matter how careful the scribes who copied them. But after Johannes Gutenburg produced the first printed Bible in Mainz (Germany) around 1455, it became possible to generate multiple and essentially identical copies of the same work in a relatively short period of time at only a fraction of the cost of a comparable number of manuscripts. 12Moveable TypePrinting spread swiftly across Europe. By 1500, the city of Venice was home to no fewer than 150 presses, including that of Aldus Manutius, who made a handsome profit producing elegant yet relatively inexpensive editions of Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient authors in the original Greek. It has been estimated that between the invention of the printing press in the mid-1450s and the end of the 15th century, some 25,000 different books were printed in Germany alone; with an average press run of 250 copies, this would mean a total of about 6 million printed books. The first music printed with movable type appeared in Venice in 1501.13Literary Figures of the RenaissanceEdmund Spenser (1552-1599) was widely admired by his contemporaries. His masterpiece, The Faerie Queene (1596), is an allegorical romance dedicated to Elizabeth I. The complex nine-line Spenserian stanza he invented for this work was adopted by the 19th century by such poets as Keats, Shelley, and Byron.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is generally regarded as the greatest playwright of the English language. His works probe the complexities and ambiguities of human characterHamlets crippling doubt, for example, or Lady Macbeths destructive lust for powerin language of immense poetic force and inventiveness.14The Protestant ReformationHumanism and printing combined to ignite the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. When a German monk named Martin Luther (1483-1546) nailed a list of grievances to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in 1517, he was only the latest in a long line of individuals to voice objections to various church practices. The immediate object of Luthers protest was the sale of indulgencescertificates from the pope or bishop promising forgiveness in the next life for sins committed in this one. But if Luther was on the first to protest what he saw as church corruption, he was among the fist with access to the power of the printing press to promulgate his views. Between 1517 and 1520, Luthers books sold an estimated 300,000 copies in some 370 editions in both Latin and German.15Protestant ReformationThe Protestant Reformation, as its name implies, arose as an expression against corrupt church practices and a desire to reform them. Luther and his followers emphasized the individuals personal relationship to God and preached a doctrine of salvation based on faith rather than on works. Protestants also encouraged worship in the vernacular, although Luther himself found himself upheld in the importance of Latin both in the liturgy and in the education of youth.Protestant ReformationConflict Such views did not sit well with the established church. Luther was declared a heretic, and his published writings against the church doctrine were used as evidence against him when he was excommunicated in 1521. Later that year, at the Diet of Worms (Diet is an archaic word for an assembly; Worms, a city on the Rhine in western Germany), he refused to recant his position before the assembled leaders of the Holy Roman Empire. The political ramifications of Luthers stand were far reaching. The German people eventually split along Protestant and Catholic lines according to the professed faith of their local ruler.Split from LutherLuther himself was challenged on matters of doctrine by other Protestants as early as 1521, and a host of Protestant sects emerged over the ensuing decades. Ulrich Zwingli and Jean Calvin were among the first to break with Luther over various theological issues and establish their own denominations. Henry the VIII, antagonizing the authority of the pope in Rome, declared himself head of the Church of England. Over the course of the next century, Anabaptists, Mennonites, Puritans, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians all rejected the authority of Rome, each group establishing its own course on matters of doctrine, liturgy, and music.Catholic ConsequencesThe Roman Catholic Church, as it gradually came to be knownprior to the Reformation, there had been only one church in the Westdid not sit idly by in the face of this religious revolution. It responded first by subjecting suspected heretics to trial, excommunication, and sometimes imprisonment or even death. The Counter-Reformation of the mid-16th century was a more systematic and positive attempt to retain or win back believers to the Roman Catholic Church, in part through a modification of doctrine and practices, in part through music.Renaissance Painting and SculptureThe contrast between medieval and Renaissance perceptions of the world are particularly evident in the realm of painting and sculpture. Renaissance painters differed from their earlier counterparts in a number of important ways. One of the most striking of these was the use of linear perspective, a method for creating the illusion of three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional surface. The technique had been familiar in an intuitive way to the ancient Greeks but was almost entirely lost over subsequent centuries.Leonardo da Vinci Myology of the Shoulder Region

Medieval vs. RenaissanceAnother characteristic of Renaissance art was a renewed interest in the human body. Medieval artists had, for the most part, used nudity for depicting lasciviousness on earth or the torments of the damned in hell. In contrast, Renaissance artists, like the artists of antiquity, became interested in the human body as an object of admiration. They also display an unprecedented interest in the scientific details of human anatomy. Humanism in ArtThis interest in the human anatomy accompanied by one of the most distinctive characteristics of Renaissance art, a desire to capture individual character in portraiture. The seven figures in the 12th-century depiction of King David and his musicians in the St. Albans Psalter all have essentially the same visage. Except for his size and ornate robes, David looks no different from the others. In contrast, each of the seven choir boys in Luca della Robbias 1431 sculpture for the choir gallery of the Florence Cathedral has a distinctive appearance and personality. Medieval Art - Example

Renaissance Art - Luca della Robbia

Music in Renaissance SocietyAs secular courts increased in size, number, and importance during the Renaissance, so too did their influence on the arts. Rulers now measured their greatness not only according to their territory, treasure, and military might, but also by what might be called their cultural capital. The arts as a whole benefited enormously from this newfound concern from cultural prestige. The Medici in Florence, the Este dynasty in Ferrara, the Sforza dynasty in Milan, the collective leadership of the Republic of Venice, the Vatican in Rome, the royal court of Naplesall these and other principalities, duchies, and kingdoms throughout Italy, and eventually throughout Europe, placed great value on having talented poets, painters, sculptors, architects, and musicians active at their courts.Performing EnsemblesAny court with pretensions to cultural importance maintained its own roster of musicians to perform during services in the court chapel as well as for banquets, dances, and other festivities of a more secular nature. The size and quality of these musical organizations varied greatly; a well-funded capella, as such an ensemble was called, typically consisted of between 12 and 20 musicians but could be larger or smaller according to the resources of the court treasury at any given time. Affluent courts actively recruited the best musical talent they could afford.Music on the MoveComposers and musicians were considerably more mobile in the Renaissance than before. The English composer John Dunstable spent a good portion of his career in France. Guillame Du Fay, Josquin des Prez, and Orlande de Lassus, all born in the Low Countries, were drawn to the active cultural life of courts on the Italian peninsula. Du Fay spent time in the courts of Florence, Rome, and Milan; Josquin in Milan, Rome, and Ferrara; and Lassus in Mantua and Rome. All three returned north of the alps later in their careers.Composers in ResidenceThe church remained an important source of patronage as well. The surviving repertory indicates that the demand for new polyphonic liturgical musicfrom settings of the Mass Ordinary to hymns to motetswas enormous. Many affluent churches maintained resident composers, providing them with housing and a fixed income in exchange for music on demand.JobsThe invention of the printing press provided yet another source of income for composers of all varieties of music, from secular songs to settings of the Mass Ordinary. Music that had once circulated in relatively scarce manuscripts could now be sold in quantity to a much wider audience.Improvised MusicAs during the medieval era, only a fraction of the music of the Renaissance was the work of professional composers and musicians. Most music was performed in the context of an unwritten tradition that operated outside any system of notation. For those who pretended to gentility, however, the ability to read music, sing, and play at least one if not more instruments was considered an essential grace. Royals themselves set the standard. The English king Henry VIII took great pride in his abilities both as a composer and singer. His daughter, Elizabeth I, was renowned as a lutenist and keyboard player.