The Heroic in Music and the Musicality of the Hero in Late Sixteenth-Century England

As a period of exploration and discovery in which noblemen aspired to military glory on the tiltyard or battlefield, classical heroes were models to be imitated, and poets such as Spenser and Tasso wrote epic poems of enduring reputation, the Renaissance has a claim to being a heroic age.¹ In England, Sir Philip Sidney was regarded by his contemporaries as something of a Renaissance hero.² Combining prowess in arms and letters he encapsulated the breadth of heroic endeavour in Renaissance thought.³ He was considered a heroic knight who died a martyr’s death fighting for the Protestant cause in the Netherlands....