Music in Western Renaissance and Modern Culture

Prologue: The culture of Renaissance instrumental music

In Renaissance courts and cities, instrumental music was deeply woven into the fabric and function of everyday life, and was accessible to a wide, demographically diverse swath of the populace. Domestic entertainment, civic and village events, courtly ritual, and the functional, clockwork activities of a city, court, or militia, all demanded the contributions of instrumentalists. The wide diver...

Is modern Western culture a health hazard?

The Offence of Beauty in Modern Western Art Music

In recent decades, beauty has become a largely unfashionable, even offensive notion within art and philosophy. As Eastern Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart, has pointed out, this offence has a twofold sense. Firstly, the ‘beautiful’ has been dismissed as philosophically insignificant in comparison to the ‘sublime’ by an intellectual tradition tracing itself back to Immanuel Kant’s Critiqu...

A Renaissance of Political Culture?

Medicine and psychiatry in Western culture: Ancient Greek myths and modern prejudices

The origins of Western culture extensively relate to Ancient Greek culture. While many ancient cultures have contributed to our current knowledge about medicine and the origins of psychiatry, the Ancient Greeks were among the best observers of feelings and moods patients expressed towards medicine and toward what today is referred to as 'psychopathology'. Myths and religious references were use...