“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” This well known saying is a major cliche, but even so it continues to be right about most of life. Renaissance era music is no exception; defined as music composed from the Renaissance time period (1400s-1600s), it was more expressive, emotional, simple, and flowing than the Medieval period before it ("Renaissance Music"). It is during this time period that the arts were changed significantly, but despite that many of these trends that are still used today, Renaissance music is not very common. Don’t worry though, after a description of the style, instruments, and the way music was written, you will become much more familiar with this unknown music.

The Renaissance era lasted from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century, and was between the Medieval and Baroque eras ("Renaissance Music"). It has many essential attributes such as music built on modes (“Renaissance Music”) which in different terms is music built with the pattern of whole to half steps on a scale (Rios). Other features of Renaissance music include mingling musical sounds instead of making sound stand out against each other, a more intenses feel with four or more parts, and more attention to, “harmony with a greater concern with the flow and progression of chords” ("Renaissance Music"). This means musicians paid more attention to how smooth and flowing the musical sounds were when put together. As time passed Renaissance music began to gain more characteristics such