[MUSIC] Humanism, let's begin our discussion of musical humanism by taking a trip to the Renaissance city par excellence, to Florence. We'll start with how it looked in the Renaissance. Here you see in the center the great Duomo of Florence, to the left, over here, the church of Santa Maria Novella, the train station is right over there. At the moment here we see City Hall Palazzo Vecchio, the Signoria where the city fathers worked. Now we're going to start up at the top of this building with a slide that shows us the city hall as it presently looks. And now we're going to go down to street level, and we are going to focus on this sculpture, this statue right here. And now we're going to see that same sculpture. On the right, a copy of the statue of David by Michelangelo on the street. On the left, the original where it now rest inside the Accademia. The original was brought indoors In the 19th century. But before then the city had a tradition. Florence had a tradition of displaying the great works of art of its citizens for all to see. But indoor or outdoor, either way, this David is very different from the sort of sculpture that we saw in the Middle Ages. Medieval sculpture, taking again, an example from the beautiful Cathedral of Chartres, tends to be fully clothed, somewhat impersonal and representing archetypes. Michelangelo's David, obviously, is very different. His seems to glorify, indeed revel in the beauty of a perfect human form. And we have a name here, a human being associated with this sculpture of David, Michelangelo. By contrast, the most prolific artist in the Middle Ages was Master Anonymous. Here we see the Cathedral of Chartres, massive. But we don't know who designed it or who built it. Now you see a tryptic of sorts. And we've come to realize that in the Middle Ages, all inspiration came from, comes from God. Hildegard on the right looks heavenward for revelation and receives it. The Holy Spirit, as see in the center with St. Thomas, and on the left with St. Gregory, the Holy Spirit sits on their shoulder, in the form of a dove communicating the divine word. Artists, as we see here in the next slide, they didn't bother to sign their works. Here we have three magnificent specimens, but all three are anonymous. But when we come into the Renaissance, there's a real person. The inspiration comes from God yes, but a human can now shape it, fashion it according to his vision. And again, he has a name, that of Leonardo or Michelangelo or of Shakespeare. And what these artists created were oftentimes works that gave pleasure to other human beings. Yes, they dealt with religion often, but they also dealt with other themes as well such as nature and the delights of this world. Here we see Botticelli's, Springtime in the Uffizi in Florence. And compare here the essence of youthful beauty on the right from the Botticelli, from the Renaissance, with the abstract medieval notion of a beautiful woman on the left from the Middle Ages. And there is a love of the good things of this world. Here's Leonardo's portrait of the young mistress of the Duke of Milan. Well she's certainly well coiffed in fine jewelry and holding in her hand her pet ermine or pet mink. Life is good. These human creators such as Leonardo da Vinci were valuable as creators, as artists. And patrons fought over them. Artists had rivalries with one another. Leonardo with Michelangelo, they were not good friends. The musician, Josquin des Prez in one case, played one patron off against another to double his salary. And the artist could get rich. Michelangelo died with an estate of about $10 million in today's money. And what these artists created could be evaluated on a scale of good and bad by other human beings. The concept of artistic value, of artistic criticism, of worth to society comes into being during the Renaissance. And even today we speak of humanism, but more often of the the humanities. He's majoring in the humanities for example. Well, what exactly do we mean by the study of the humanities? Well, evaluation, deep critical thinking, comparison of literature, of the acts of history, of art and of the history of art, of music and of the history of music. Comparison of styles and of composers, that's what we're doing here in this course. And it all goes back to the Renaissance.
