Renaissance

The Renaissance was an artistic movement which flourished between the 14th and 17th centuries. Renaissance means 're-birth' in French and it saw artists and scholars looking back to classical antiquity for inspiration and instruction. This caused revolutions across a wide spectrum of human endeavour from painting and architecture to science and medicine. In music the Renaissance period saw the development of polyphony in choral music to its highest level of complexity; particularly in the music of Palestrina and the Flemish school of composers. Towards the latter end of the period instrumental music became increasingly important and in the late 16th Century opera was born in Italy reflecting the growing secularisation of music following the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The Renaissance in music is supposed to end around 1600 with the emergence of the Baroque period. Monteverdi (d. 1643), the greatest composer of his era, spans both artistic movements as does the work of Englishman William Byrd (d. 1623). Key Composers: Binchois, Byrd, Clemens non Papa, De La Rue, Dufay, Gabrielli, Gesualdo, Gombert, Lassus, Monteverdi, Obrecht, Ockeghem, Palestrina, Tallis, Taverner