Art and Music of the Renaissance Lecture-Concert Series

Join Victoria Martino, AB '80, for Her Annual Concert Series on Renaissance Music

Victoria Martino continues her annual lecture-concert series at the Athenaeum, begun in 2003. Employing her extensive background in art history, literature, and music, Ms. Martino will illuminate the complex interrelationships between the arts of the Renaissance in Europe from 1400 to 1600, placing them within their broader cultural, religious, and political contexts. In her lecture-concerts, each musical performance by the Musica Pro Arte Ensemble will be juxtaposed with a PowerPoint presentation of art works from the same region and period. Ms. Martino is dedicating this year's series to the treasured memory of her late husband, Konrad Oberhuber, a renowned Renaissance scholar, and the world authority on Raphael.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 at 7:30PM: 1400-1450
The period around 1430 was one of intense change - the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. Some artists and musicians still perfected the old medieval, courtly Gothic tradition, while bold innovators like Jan van Eyck and Masaccio took a new look at reality. In music, the troubadour Oswald von Wolkenstein still relished the old courtly style, while Guillaume Dufay, Joannes Ockeghem, and Conrad Paumann experimented with a new tonality and rhythm.


Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at 7:30PM: 1450-1500
In the second half of the fifteenth century, the emotional and dramatic qualities of the new style were explored further. Painters like Hugo van der Goes, Martin Schongauer, Sandro Botticelli, and Andrea Mantegna were masters at rendering feelings and in exploring both the social and the religious transformations of the time. Composers like Josquin de Pres, Jacob Obrecht, Heinrich lsaak. Adam von Fulda and Bartolommeo Tromboncino gave voice to these new discoveries.


Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 7:30PM: 1490-1530 in Italy
The High Renaissance marked the first culmination of all the new discoveries in the hands of masters like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael, as well as Giorgione and Titian. A new unity and clarity combined the traditions of the Middle Ages with those of the newly reborn Antiquity. This freedom of assimilation was also expressed in the music of Bartolommeo degli Organi, Costanzo Festa, and Marchetto Cara. Yet the values of the High Renaissance were soon questioned by the younger generation of Jacopo Pontormo, Giulio Romano, and others, called the "Mannerists." 


Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 7:30PM: 1490-1530 in the North
This is the time of a great flowering of the arts, as evidenced by the works of Albrecht Dürer; Matthias Grünewald, and Hieronymus Bosch. It is also the moment of the Reformation. The religious and social fervor of the time can be felt in great artistic masterpieces like the "Garden of Earthly Delights," but can also be found in the music of Paulus Hofhaymer, Thomas Stolzer, and Ludwig Senfl.


Tuesday, April 1, 2014 at 7:30PM: 1530-1600
Renaissance art continued to flourish in Italy, especially in Venice, with Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto. In the Netherlands, Pieter Bruegel was the master of a new realistic vision of the world. Netherlandish musicians like Orlando di Lasso rivaled Italians like Giovanni Palestrina in the perfecting of the polyphonic music of the time. Towards the end of the century, one sensed the coming age of the Baroque in a new search for harmony.

For tickets and information, call 858-454-5872 or visit www.ljathenaeum.org/lectures