1600-1699Western Europe

Early Music

Also known as historically informed performance, HIP

A wide historical listening category that brings together medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque repertories, especially as heard through historically informed performance.

Origins and context

A modern umbrella term applied to repertories that arose in medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque Europe, then re-entered concert life through the 20th-century early-music revival and historically informed performance movement.

Western Europe

How to listen

Mood

Meditative, airy, ceremonial, and sometimes unexpectedly theatrical

History

The label usually gathers repertories from the medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque eras, with roots in Western European sacred and courtly traditions and a timeline that stretches roughly from the early Middle Ages to the first decades of the 17th century. Over time, liturgical chant, polyphony, madrigals, and the first operatic and concerted writing each left their mark on the style-world now grouped under Early Music. As a modern genre label, Early Music is also tied to the 20th-century revival of historically informed performance: scholars and performers began treating old treatises, instruments, and ensemble practices as active guides rather than museum pieces. Ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, founded in 1973, and Bach Collegium Japan, founded in 1990, helped make that approach audible to wider audiences through recordings and touring. (thetallisscholars.co.uk)

Notable artists