Renaissance music in the Slavic world

The essays collected in this volume were undertaken in the framework of the European programme EACEA - Culture Programme 2007-2013 Aux confins de l'Humanisme musical : monde slave et culture méditerranéenne, developped between 2010 and 2012 by the « Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance de Tours », the Matica Hrvastka - Organak Dubrovnik (Mediterranean Study Centre of Dubrovnik), the Univerzita Karlova v Praze, and the University of Palermo. Leading scholars from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Poland (or, as they were called during the Renaissance : Ragusa, Bohemia, Silesia), as well musicologists from Western Europe, take on the challenge of fulfilling a historiographical and cultural gap in music history, with hte aim of restoring the place of the countries of Central Europe that 'vanished for the map of the West', as posited by Milan Kundera.

The opportunity to consider 'other' renaissances enlarges the historiographical perspectives of Renaissance musicology and opens new scenarios on an unexplored Renaissance music. The preference accorded to the expression « Renaissance Music » is not to be intended as a shortcut. The intention of the contributing scholars is to focus on, and to handle independently, the endogenous cultural production without considering it only as a phenomenon of importation or as the mere imitation of an existing model. In this way, borders reveal a dialectical function in the context of musical Humanism, revealing here, perhaps for the first time, an authentic European dimension.