Because there were no dramatic shifts in musical thinking during the fifteenth century, the year 1450 is used as an arbitrary beginning point for the Renaissance period. The music of the era was typically rigid and structured, offering major advances in polyphony through the increased development of counterpoint in vocal music. Both liturgical music (most popularly the mass) and secular music (the madrigal) of the time were primarily modal, relying on ordered sets of intervals, though modality began to break down near the end of the Renaissance, leading to the tonal system we still use today. The Renaissance era ended with the onset of the Baroque era around the year 1600.

Notable Artists: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, William Byrd, Claudio Monteverdi