Early music is commonly defined as European classical music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, sometimes also including the Baroque.
The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become a subject of interest until the 19th century, when Europeans began looking to ancient culture generally, and musicians began to discover the musical riches from earlier centuries. The idea of performing early music mor...
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Early music is commonly defined as European classical music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, sometimes also including the Baroque.
The general discussion of how to perform music from ancient or earlier times did not become a subject of interest until the 19th century, when Europeans began looking to ancient culture generally, and musicians began to discover the musical riches from earlier centuries. The idea of performing early music more "authentically", with a sense of incorporating performance practice, was more completely established in the 20th century, creating a modern revival that continues today.
In the early-music revival of the 20th century, the concept of historically informed performance—that is, using available documentation and other contextual evidence to recreate as closely as possible the original ways of playing the instruments used in early music—became an important facet of the performance of early musical notation.
Before about 1600, written music did...
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