2 - The Concept of the Renaissance

Summary

ONCE the proudest of words identifying periods of Western history, the term “Renaissance” has in recent years had a bit of a hard time. There are several reasons for this. First, some scholars argue that there have been many periods of political, social, and artistic renewal, many renaissances rather than one to be set apart with an assertive capital letter. This is a useful idea, and we will presently turn to it.

Next, proponents of continuity in cultural history have pointed out the multiple aspects of medieval life and thought that continued, changing in various ways and at different times, into the period (late fourteenth century to early seventeenth century) most generally if admittedly roughly defined as the Renaissance. If on the other hand what we have been used to calling the Renaissance marks the beginning of modern life more than the continuation of medieval culture, and more than the simple revival of ancient thought and art, “early modern” might be a better term for the period, and it has been employed by music historians as well as by scholars in other fields. Supposing a trifold division, ancient–medieval–modern, of Western culture, as was already done in the late seventeenth century, this might do. But “modern” is a tricky word, increasingly so in our contemporary world as scholars and critics have turned to calling their own culture “post-modern.” There are even more “modern” periods in cultural history than there are “renaissances.” “Modern” and “reborn” strike me in any event as nearly antithetical terms. And in the history of music the break between ancient and modern—between the end of the late hellenistic tradition and the documentable rise of Western music—could be seen as deeper than anything in our subsequent history, even though recognizing it as such does away entirely with the Middle Ages.

More fundamental objections to use of the word “Renaissance” come from scholars who object to an often strongly Italian focus joined with elitist presuppositions and who are tired of Hegelian dialectic, seeing on both counts little that is salvageable in nineteenth-century historical writing of even partially Hegelian cast ; in particular they are opposed to the work of Jacob Burckhardt, whose Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy put the term on the historiographical map.