The turn of the 17th century represents not only the golden age of the Venetian Republic, but one of the most variegated moments in the history of Western art music. The innovations of the Venetian School, influential far beyond the confines of its native lagoon, represent the culmination of a stylistic evolution in a period of aesthetic transition from the high Renaissance to the early Baroque. The instrumental music of ôLa Serenissimaö is celebrated not only for the enormous historical, cultural, and artistic inheritence that it represents, but, quite simply, for its sheer beauty.
