Start ||| The Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield

CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

From Jacob Burckhardt's 2nd edition of the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy; edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS

Part Five: Society and Festivals

Music

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

» Full Contents of this Part

Part Five: Society and Festivals   » Equality of Classes   » Costumes and Fashions   » Language and Society   » Social Etiquette ||| Education of the 'Cortigiano'   » Music   » Equality of Men and Women   » Domestic Life   » Festivals

Page 4

This dilettantism, which pervaded the middle as well as the upper classes, was in Italy both more widespread and more genuinely artistic than in any other country of Europe. Wherever we meet with a description of social intercourse, there music and singing are always and expressly mentioned. Hundreds of portraits show us men and women, often several together, playing or holding some musical instrument, and the angelic concerts represented in the ecclesiastical pictures prove how familiar the painters were with the living effects of music. We read of the lute-player Antonio Rota, at Padua (d. 1549), who became a rich man by his lessons, and published a handbook to the practice of the lute.

At a time when there was no opera to concentrate and monopolize musical talent, this general cultivation of the art must have been something wonderfully varied, intelligent, and original. It is another question how much we should find to satisfy us in these forms of music, could they now be reproduced for us.

 

Previous / First Page of this Chapter / Next Chapter »

Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: Table of Contents

url: www.ellopos.net/politics/renaissance/default.asp

IN PRINT

Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * The Making of Europe