European Music 1520-1640

The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - the so-called Golden Age of Polyphony - represent a time of great change and development in European music with the flourishing of Orlando di Lasso Palestrina Byrd Victoria Monteverdi and Schütz among others.The chapters of this book contributed by established scholars on subjects within their fields of expertise deal with polyphonic music - sacred and secular vocal and instrumental - during this period. The volume offers chronological surveys of national musical cultures (in Italy France the Netherlands Germany England and Spain); genre studies (Mass motet madrigal chanson instrumental music opera); and is completed with essays on intellectual and cultural developments and concepts relevant to music (music theory printing the Protestant Reformation and the corresponding Catholic movement humanism concepts of Renaissance and Baroque). It thus provides a complete overview of the music and its context