How did early renaissance music come to be?
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 to 1600. Defining the beginning of the era is difficult, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century. Additionally, the process by which music acquired “Renaissance” characteristics was a gradual one, and musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s. Recent contributions to musicological research however suggest that the concept should be avoided altogether, or at least used with utmost care, due to the extreme difficulties in defining the meaning and periodization of the term. It is safe to state that the Italian humanist movement, uncovering and proliferating the aesthetics of antique Roman and Greek art, contributed to an accelerated revalidation of music on a conceptual level, but its direct influence on music theory, composition and performance remains suggestive.
