Renaissance Era

Music: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 - 1594)

Art: Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445 – 1510)

Poetry: William Shakespeare (1564 -1616)

(Find all notebooking pages for these lessons under "Everything.")

Monday:

Read

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was Italian and spent much of his life in Rome. Most of his music was written for the Catholic church, and he held important church positions, including music director for St. Peter's in Rome.

Palestrina wrote 104 masses (for choir) and about 450 other sacred works. He was an important composer of the Counter-Reformation. The Catholic church made the decision that "church music should be composed not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but to inspire religious contemplation" (Music: An Appreciation by Roger Kamien). Palestrina's music, therefore, is restrained and serene.

His most famous mass is Pope Marcellus Mass. It's written for an a cappella choir of six vocal parts (soprano, alto, two tenors, and two basses). Listen to it here:

Listen

Another mass is Missa in Duplicitus Minoribus:

Fill out Music Appreciation Listening Sheets.

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Tuesday:

Read

Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445 – 1510) was an Italian Early Renaissance painter who lived and died in Florence, Italy. He is best known for his paintings "Adoration of the Magi" (1475), "Primavera" (1482), and "The Birth of Venus" (1485).

Botticelli was part of the team of artists who created the first paintings in the Sistine Chapel. He was also often given commissions by the powerful Medici family of Florence.

Watch

Study

"Giuliano de' Medici" c. 1478/1480 Painting

Fill out Art Appreciation Sheet answering some of the questions about the painting.

Listen to yesterday's music again to fill the rest of your time.

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Wednesday:

Listen again to Palestrina's masses.

Listen

Pope Marcellus

Duplicitus Minoribus:

Fill out Composer Sheet about Palestrina.

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Thursday:

Study

"Madonna and Child with Angels" 1465/1470 Painting

Listen to yesterday's music again to fill the rest of your time.

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Friday:

Who was William Shakespeare (1564 -1616)?

Watch and Read

William Shakespeare wrote 154 poems called sonnets. Before Shakespeare's time, a sonnet referred to any short lyric poem. But, after he began writing them, the sonnet form became fixed as a one-stanza, 14-line poem, written in iambic pentameter.

Learn more about sonnets here:

Read and Study

Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Watch

Copy the poem on the Poetry Appreciation Sheet and answer questions about the poem.

Listen to this week's music again to fill the rest of your time.