Music of the Renaissance

Howard Mayer Brown wrote this book to introduce the music of the Renaissance period to college and university students, colleagues in other disciplines, and interested music-lovers. He sought to answer several fundamental questions: What were the most significant features of Renaissance music? Who were its greatest composers? How were they great? What is there about this music that still makes it meaningful for us today? Though we may question the value judgments implicit in the words “significant” and “greatest”, Brown believed, even in his last years, that the history of music was shaped by the accomplishments of individuals. The Slovak translation of this widely recognised book fits into the series of publications on particular stylistic periods of music that were published either by the Music Centre Slovakia (Medieval Music, The Classical Style) or by the OPUS Publishing House (Music in the Baroque Era, Music in the Romantic Era), thus forming a compendium of the history of Western music from the early Christian chant to fin de siècle of the nineteenth century.