while his English contemporaries experimented with idio-
syncratic approaches to combining speculative theory
with the realities of performance.
In the 16th century, major compendia of music
theory, mainly printed, compose the bulk of significant
new writing. Italian treatises such as Pietro Aaron’s
Toscanello in musica (first printed in 1523) and Gioseffo
ZARLINO’s Istitutioni harmoniche (1558) became classic ex-
positions of the foundations of 16th-century musical style.
Large-scale vernacular music primers were also printed in
France, Britain, and the Germanic and Iberian regions.
One of the major treatises of the period appeared publicly
in 1547, the Dodecachordon by the Swiss humanist Hein-
rich GLAREANUS. Glareanus’s book raised the idea of re-
covering the effects of ancient music through a reform of
the system of modes; these were linked to specific emo-
tional characteristics, and had always been associated with
the legendary powers of music in the ancient world.
Nicola VICENTINO’s L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna
prattica (1555), on the other hand, sought to reinstate the
ancient “chromatic” and “enharmonic” melodic genera
(alongside the diatonic, which was the only one in practi-
cal use). A third means by which 16th-century writers
tackled the crucial problem of affect was experimentation
with classical quantitative poetic meters, expressed in a di-
rect and strict manner through musical rhythms. The
most famous example is the style of musique mesurée à
l’antique produced at Jean-Antoine de BAÏF’s Parisian acad-
emy in the 1570s.
In the end, the most significant impact on musical
style came from the circle of Giovanni de’ BARDI, whose
Florentine Camerata experimented with a new recitative
compositional style, supposedly in imitation of ancient
Greek music. Treatises by Girolamo Mei (1573), Vincenzo
GALILEI(1581), and Bardi himself (1578) rejected funda-
mental principles of earlier musical practice as having no
grounding in ancient tradition and confounding the ex-
pressive delivery of texts. It was this environment which,
at the end of the century, gave birth to the earliest forms
of opera. Ironically, the most concerted efforts to revive
the classical world in music are traditionally seen as mark-
ing the end of the musical “Renaissance.”
Further reading: Bonnie J. Blackburn, Edward E.
Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller (eds.), A Correspondence
of Renaissance Musicians (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press,
1991); James Haar, The Science and Art of Renaissance
Music (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998);
Claude V. Palisca, Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical
Thought (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University
Press, 1985).
Muziano, Girolamo (1528–1592) Italian painter and
engraver
Based in Brescia, near his birthplace of Acquafreddo,
Muziano was a pupil of ROMANINO, by whom he was
greatly influenced. Muziano also shared with Titian a taste
for strong color and dramatic landscape, as seen in his St.
Jerome (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo). Around 1548 he
went to Rome and was influenced by the work of
Michelangelo and Raphael. He produced some attractive
landscape drawings, now in the Uffizi, Florence.Myconius, Oswald (Oswald Geisshäusler) (1488–
1552) Swiss reformer
One of the pioneering figures of Swiss humanism, Myco-
nius was born at Lucerne and studied in Rottweil and
Basle before coming to Zürich to teach in the cathedral
school there. He played an influential role in securing the
appointment of his friend Ulrich ZWINGLIas minister and
was a close collaborator in his reforming work. In 1531
Myconius was called to Basle, where he succeeded John
OECOLAMPADIUSas chief minister and remained for the rest
of his life. He supervised the publication of the Basle Con-
fession of 1534 and helped draft the first Helvetic Confes-
sion of 1536. His writings included a number of biblical
commentaries and the first biography of Zwingli (1536).mythology The classical myths had caused serious prob-
lems for the Middle Ages. Their solution was either to
characterize the pagan gods as devils, a method sanc-
tioned by St. Augustine, or to allegorize them as symbols
of Christian ethics and morality, a method exemplified in
the countless manuscripts of the work known as Ovid
Moralized. Renaissance scholars inherited both these ap-
proaches and added something of their own. A number of
handbooks of mythology had been transmitted to the Re-
naissance; the Bibliotheke (Library) of Apollodorus and two
works attributed to Julius Hyginus provided a basis for the
study of the classical myths. The late antique period pro-
duced a number of commentaries—Servius’s on Virgil
(early fifth century) is the best known—which supple-
mented the handbooks.
The first Renaissance scholar to draw on these re-
sources was BOCCACCIO, who compiled (1350–75) De
genealogiis deorum, an encyclopedia of mythology, geogra-
phy, and history. He also made use of Leonzio Pilato’s
notes to his translation of Homer and of Lactantius
Placidus’s commentary on the Thebaid of Statius. For Boc-
caccio a knowledge of classical mythology is an essential
part of a poet’s equipment; the 14th book of the Genealo-
gia is in fact devoted to this proposition. He adopted the
Stoic position that myths are allegories of deeper truths,
and this was to have a profound influence on later stu-
dents of mythology. Boccaccio’s popular work circulated
widely in manuscript and was printed with a commentary
by Micyllus in 1532. It was the primary source of infor-
mation about classical myth for poets and artists; Chaucer
made use of it and its influence can be seen in the Renais-
sance painter’s love of allegory. It was finally superseded
by the Mythologia of Natalis Comes (1551), which pro-33332 2 MMuuzziiaannoo,, GGiirroollaammoo