Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/117

 CHAPTER VII

THE VENETIAN AND ROMAN SCHOOLS

53. General Survey.—The 16th century is perhaps the most fascinating of any before the 19th, since it was the meeting-point of mediæval and modern life. Into it as towards a focus various lines of progress converged, only to be recombined and redirected. All Europe was stirred by the great mental movements of the Renaissance and the Revival of Letters, which originated further back, but were now hastened to maturity by certain events that gave an unexampled expansion to intellectual and artistic interests.

Note especially (a) the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, which sent a wave of Byzantine learning into the West, making real the richness of ancient literature and art, (b) the invention of printing with movable types about 1450, making it possible to multiply and distribute the tools of culture indefinitely, (c) other inventions that tended to alter society, like gunpowder, changing the whole aspect of war and politics, and the mariner's compass, opening the door to explorations beyond the sea, and (d) startling discoveries of far-off geographical facts, as of America (1492), the Cape of Good Hope and the sea-route to India (1498), the Pacific (1513), etc., enlarging men's horizons, awakening adventurous zeal, and provoking dreams of foreign domain and fabulous wealth.

In place of the stiff and abstract scholasticism of the Middle Ages the New Learning now asserted itself, being really the first expression of the modern historical and scientific spirit. Other signs of the mental vigor of the age were the advances of arts like painting and poetry under masters of permanent importance.

As illustrations, note that Erasmus, the leader of the Humanists, was born in 1465 and died in 1536, that here belong typical Italian painters of the first rank, like Da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), Raphael (1483-1520) and Titian (1477-1576), with the German Dürer (1471-1528), and that here was the brilliant blossoming of the Elizabethan Era in England.

As the century opens, we find ourselves on the verge of the tremendous upheaval of the Reformation, appearing just before