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In 410 C.E., the Visigoths, led by Alaric, breached the walls of Rome and sacked the capital of the Roman Empire. The Visigoths looted, burned, and pillaged their way through the city, leaving a wake of destruction wherever they went. The plundering continued for three days. For the first time in nearly a millennium, the city of Rome was in the hands of someone other than the Romans.
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Migration period, also called Dark Ages or Early Middle Ages, the early medieval period of western European history
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Feudalism, historiographic construct designating the social, economic, and political conditions in western Europe during the early Middle Ages, the long stretch of time between the 5th and 12th centuries.
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(The years are a close estimate.) Music theorist; he is credited with creating a system of precise pitch notation through lines and spaces on a staff; he advovcated a method of sight-singing using the syllables, (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la); his treatise, Micrologus, is the earliest and best treatise on musical composition of chant and polyphony.
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Composer of the first morality play; known as the Sybil of the Rhine; writer, composer, theologian; her counsel was sought after by rulers
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(The years are a close estimate.) Famous troubadour; perhaps the finest of the troubadour poets; very important musically to us because more of his music survives than any other 12th century poet.
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(Magister Leoninus II); Master of organum purum at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris; our information comes largely from Anonymous IV's writings
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Poet and Minnesinger; worked at the Viennese court; he wrote the earliest surviving minnesinger melody; his contemporaries considered him the leading composer and poet among Minnesinger
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(The years are a close estimate.) Master of discant organum at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris; supposed student of Leonin; wrote 3 and 4-voice organum; his identity is regarded as speculative
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Black Death, pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time.
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Famous female troubadour; she has left us the only surviving melody by a female troubadour (trobairitz)
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(Flourished at this time.) Trouvére; wrote in several genres and forms; monk at Arras
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(The years are a close estimate.) One of the last trouvéres; wrote polyphony; studied in Paris
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Known as the "inventor of a new art," French composer, poet, theorist, and bishop; established a new tradition of mensural notation
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(The years are a close estimate.) The leading composer and poet of the Ars Nova; his importance and innovations are extraordinary
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(The years are a close estimate.) Known for his cadences; virtuoso organist; blind from early age; most celebrated musical personality of the Trecento; also an instrument maker
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(The years are a close estimate.) The leading English composer; created a new consonant style of 3rds and 6ths that became the Renaissance style; many works destroyed during the English Reformation 1536-40; [also spelled Dunstable]
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(The years are a close estimate.) Franco-Flemish; the first important Renaissance composer; used older medieval cadences; [also spelled Dufay]
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(The years are a close estimate.) Bass singer; served 3 Kings; very respected; did not use much imitation; born in Northeastern France; important teacher
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(The years are a close estimate.) Franco-Flemish composer who influenced German music; court composer to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in Vienna; served in Florence as well.
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(The years are a close estimate.) Leading composer at the Burgundian court; never worked in Italy; very famous in his day; frequent use of canon and ostinato; preferred low sonorities
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Leonardo da Vinci, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper and Mona Lisa are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time.
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(The years are a close estimate.) Considered by Matin Luther to be the "best of the composers of our time" and "the master of the notes;" he was said to have had no peer in music; French
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(The years are a close estimate.) Made important contributions to large-scale forms and their unity; Dutch; important composer of masses in Europe
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First music printer and publisher; preserved Renaissance music for us today.
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German theologian and composer; he was the founder of the Lutheran Church
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(The years are a close estimate.) Complex, continuous polyphony; strong advocate of textual expression; studied with Jean Mouton; served in Italian courts; extraordinary teacher, worked in Venice at St. Marks Cathedral
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(The years are a close estimate.) English organist; taught Byrd; he was Catholic during Henry VIII's troubled years; wrote both for the Latin and the reformed English liturgies
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(The years are a close estimate.) Dutch; worked in Rome and Paris; famous for his early madrigals and his 3 to 7-voice masses (often homorhythmic style); well published in the 16th century.
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(The years are a close estimate.) Flemish; worked in Ferrara and Parma; associated with Willaert.
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At the Viennese and Prague courts; religious; Franco-Flemish; mixed polyphony and homophony; one of the most prolific composers of the Renaissance.
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Became and icon of Renaissance music for future generations; Roman style; responded to the requests of the Council of Trent to reform Catholic church music; mostly contrapuntal liturgical music.
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Madrigal, form of vocal chamber music that originated in northern Italy during the 14th century, declined and all but disappeared in the 15th, flourished anew in the 16th, The 14th-century madrigal is based on a relatively constant poetic form of two or three stanzas of three lines each, with 7 or 11 syllables per line.
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(The years are a close estimate.) Also Roland de Lassus; widely traveled; employed G. Gabrieli in 1575; over 2000 compositions in all languages; one of the most versatile and prolic composers in the 16th century.
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English; contributed to the development of the English madrigal; important for music publication and printing; probably a pupil of Byrd; wrote in 1597, "A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke."
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William Shakespeare, English poet, dramatist, and actor, often called the English national poet and considered by many to be the greatest dramatist of all time.
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Ahead of his time; took music into a new style ("seconda pratica" vs. the older, "prima pratica")
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From his large collection called Sacred Symphonies. 8 musical lines interacting with each other in polyphony, sometimes creating homorhythm. Split choirs.Composed by Gabrieli