Renaissance composers

During the 16th century, composers focused mainly on church music since the Renaissance in England started much later than in the rest of Europe. The most popular secular music style was the partsong until innovative composers such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd paved way beyond three- and four-part homophonic pieces. Thomas Tallis (c. 1505 – 1585) and William Byrd (c. 1540 – 1623) were versatile composers who wrote for the Catholic, Anglican, and Puritan churches alike. Tallis, best known…

Isabella D’Este: The Lady of the Italian Renaissance The regional courts in Italy during the Renaissance period of the mid-fourteenth to sixteenth centuries played a significant role in the nurturing, spreading and development of Renaissance ideas. “[T]he court [is] defined [as] the space inhabited by the prince, his consort, household, courtiers and officials;” The complex of court buildings usually encompassed a palace or castle where the ruler resided, surrounded by chapels,…

often tramples the old. Such was the case with tapestry in the 16th century as the Renaissance swept over Europe. Tapestry-makers bent to the demands of society to include Renaissance ideas into tapestry, ultimately leading to their own demise. By examining the aesthetic differences between Gothic and Renaissance Tapestry, one can examine the damage that occurred as cartoonists and weavers began applying Renaissance techniques and discarded the focus on decoration and texture that dominated the…

Michelangelo was born on March 6, 1475. People believed the he was homosexual. He loved someone with the name of Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. Tammaso would later get married and have children. Michelangelo was 57 when Tammaso was in his teens. Michelangelo wrote this to his lover, “If one soul in two bodies is made eternal, raising both to heaven would be with similar wings.” About the age of 16 he was inspired to do sculptures. Soon he went to live with Lorenzo the Magnificent and started to do a…

intellectuals at the beginning of the Renaissance. They ultimately believed that humankind was good. Humanist believed that mankind was worth something and the intellectual knowledge had power. From the humanist movement came the reawakening of literature, history, politics, and ethics. Humanist additionally believed that love was very powerful, and that they should following their earthly needs and move past their medieval viewpoints on life. Masaccio- Known as a Renaissance painter who…

for his unusual musical talent. The administrative records that depicts him as a legend of music are few or let’s say rare to found with certainty. But, some of the remains gives us the outline of his contributions in the field of music during renaissance. During his period, the quality of his music was hardly appreciated than the music of his contemporaries as a result of which we can now only find the works of Josquin through the admiration by his later contemporaries. It is believed that…

the Renaissance period; even in the Late-Medieval Era, this type of imagery was commonplace (Pesce 2009: 152). However, the pre-enlightenment reverence of the physical features of the Virgin Mary can be viewed more as a stylistic and poetic custom than a sign of growing materialist and secular influences, which would not truly begin until philosophers such as Machiavelli, another Florentine, normalised resentment of the Church in the 1510s (Unger 2011:180), paving the way for some composers to…

The Renaissance was a fresh start for Europeans and the beginning of the modern world. The decline of feudalism allowed Europeans to have more freedom. New opportunities presented themselves, people were becoming educated and even moving into better social classes. Galileo Galilei was the first out of six descendants from Vincenzo Galilei, an Italian composer (History.com Staff). Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy in 1564 and later on his family moved to Florence in 1572 (Machamer). The scientist…

training musicians of the Renaissance were exposed to the works of composers from many other regions which in turn had a profound effect on the music that they composed which also had features from their own local music culture. These new musical ideas were also contributed to greatly by aspiring musicians who travelled to the South from across the Alps, as they also brought home new repertory. The stylistic stability evident in the written tradition of the Renaissance period is probably due to…

mortality and lack of true superiority (Aberth 95). After the plague, peasants started becoming aware of the corrupt Church-led government. They began demanding more rights and started to rebel. Gradually, the Medieval era began to shift into a renaissance, bringing new ideas…