In 1450 Giovanni Rucellai, a Florentine visitor to Rome, counted 1022 inns ‘with signboards’, and a quantity of other hostelries. For centuries, Rome had been a magnet that drew the faithful by the tens of thousands to its venerable walls. The reason, of course, was that it was the ancestral home of the Holy See – the centre of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Although urbs Roma could not boast of this honour throughout the entire Middle Ages, by the middle of the fifteenth century, with the reign of Nicholas V, the Holy See was securely re-established at Rome, never to depart again.

The flood of religious pilgrims to the Holy City, during Jubilee years and at other times, certainly accounted for a large part of the crowds of visitors to Rome. It is not, however, the Rome of the pilgrim that will concern us here, but the city that housed the papal Curia, the vast bureaucracy established to assist the pontiff with the temporal and spiritual responsibilities of his office. Thousands of petitioners came to Rome not to seek plenary indulgence but to secure for themselves a particular and specific papal Grace.

Any explanation of the emerging polyphonic chanson in the years before 1330 must negotiate varied repertories and compositions. One of the central genres in such a study would be the polyphonic rondeau. It is characterised by a musico-poetic structure more or less analogous to the rondeau of the later fourteenth century, but also by three-part music – mostly syllabic, note-against-note – that is copied in score. Our view of these sorts of compositions is dominated by the works of Adam de la Halle, whose sixteen score-notated polyphonic settings of vernacular lyrics are preserved in a manuscript now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (F-Pn), MS fr. 25566.

And what shall I say of thee, O Lorenzo Gusnasco … ? Of such renown were your musical instruments, Lorenzo, that when they were for sale in the principal cities of Italy and bore the inscription of having been made by Lorenzo da Pavia the client never hesitated, no matter how excessive the price might have seemed, to spend greatly because of the excellence and authority of this most famous maker.

‘On 1 October 1518, Cardinal Cornaro and Cardinal Pisani left Venice for Rome; they went by water to Chioggia, then set out on horseback.’ Thus begins the diary entry of a young Venetian patrician, Marcantonio Michiel, who was himself a member of the travelling party. Twenty-five days later they arrived in Rome, where Michiel was to stay for two years. During this period he noted in his diary both political events in Rome and news from Venice, but – unlike many diarists – he was keenly interested in art and music, and he also recorded detailed descriptions of Roman festivities. Having been brought up in Venice, with its magnificent state pageantry, he was prepared to appreciate Roman ceremonial, both civic and religious, and, with his entrée to the papal court, he was privileged to be present at private entertainments. For some of these occasions we have eye-witness accounts by other observers, but for several Michiel seems to be the only source known so far. He enlarges our picture of the music-loving pope and highlights the activities of Leo's private musicians. His reports of musical performances add new information to our meagre knowledge of early sixteenth-century instrumentation.

On the day before Christmas in 1520, the Venetian organist Giovanni da Legge wrote to his friend and mentor, the theorist Giovanni del Lago:

I should like you to send me here in Rome ‘quella bella cosa’ by Tinctoris that you wanted to give me when I left [Venice]. At that time you told me you had a resolution that you had made before for the late Zampiero. I should really like to have it together with some explanation so that I could understand the reasons for the resolution, for which I should be much obliged to you. I want to see what some worthy men here have to say about it.

Without question, one of the most familiar texts to students of medieval music is the often-cited passage in the treatise of Anonymous IV that offers an account of the historical development of the Notre-Dame tradition. I introduce my own discussion of the ‘making’ of the Parisian liber organi with a brief consideration of this famous text.The Latin is, with minor adjustments, that of F. Reckow, Der Musiktraktat des Anonymus 4, 2 vols. (Beihefte zum Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 4-5; Wiesbaden, 1967), i, pp. 45-6. The translation is my own, but it has benefited from suggestions by Leofranc Holford-Strevens (most important among them, the readings of ‘optimus organista’ and ‘optimus discantor’ as ‘an excellent organista’ and ‘an excellent discantor’).

Johannes de Grocheio is best known today primarily for the fact that he wrote about secular monophony, a subject practically ignored by previous music writers. In Grocheio’s only surviving treatise, which modern scholarship has christened De musica (it is actually untitled in the manuscripts), he provides an unparalleled witness to Parisian musical life around 1300 through a wide-ranging classification of musical performances. The treatise’s tantalisingly realistic observations have been by far the most discussed aspect of De musica in over a century of modern scholarship ranging from an early landmark critical edition to recent postmodern readings. However, for those intent on discovering thirteenth-century performance practice, Grocheio has been as much a musicological frustration as a delight. The most egregious problem is that he appears not to describe some of his musical examples accurately. What has been lost in a great deal of this discussion is the extent to which Grocheio’s unique perspective shapes his discussion of music.

Towards the end of August 1350, Petrarch wrote from his home at Padua to Philippe de Vitry, chastising his friend for a letter that he had sent to their mutual patron, Cardinal Guy de Boulogne, papal legate in Italy. Vitry's mind has slowed since their first acquaintance, writes Petrarch, so that he now considers even a glorious absence from France undesirable. The man who, when asked where he was from, answered that he was a citizen of the world, now thinks any departure from France an exile. The dust of France lies too heavily on his shoes; the Petit-Pont in Paris, ‘its arch not quite in the shape of a tortoise shell’, is too appealing to him, and the murmur of the Seine delights his ear too much.

The medieval term enté, meaning ‘grafted’, has a long and varied history in musicological study. It is usually held to refer to the practice of grafting a refrain (whether text or melody or both) onto a longer work, such as a motet voice. For modern scholars its chief importance lies in its association with the thirteenth-century motet: it has been discussed principally in its role as a classificatory term, where it occurs as a rubric in several medieval manuscript lyric collections, and is also mentioned (in Latin) in a well-known passage from the musical treatise De musica (c.1300) by Johannes de Grocheio. After a period of settled usage in the work of such scholars as Friedrich Ludwig, Friedrich Gennrich and Yvonne Rokseth, the term has been freshly examined by Mark Everist, and the settled usage declared incorrect. Everist’s stimulating revisionary argument has ensured that we cannot continue to use the term without care. It seems appropriate to consider the implications of his case more fully, and take the opportunity to reassess the term in the light of his arguments. In particular, since he proposes that a motet enté is characterized by a specifically musical technique, his work raises the issue of how far in that case we are to understand grafting as a textual procedure. This essay attempts two kinds of assessment: one, a revisiting of the term in relation to the motet; and the other, a wider, historical look at the term in poetic as well as musical contexts.

Modern scholarship about Renaissance instrumental music has suffered from a scarcity of musical sources. Consequently current research efforts often seem to operate in the manner of archaeological excavations; at times it is only as one layer is painstakingly uncovered that the configurations of another are revealed. This was certainly the experience of this contribution, which began as an investigation into late fifteenth-century Italian instrumental practices. The early phases of the Italian study involved sifting through many archival documents, and one initial miscellaneous impression was that German players frequently appeared in Italian ensembles. Pursuit of this almost casual observation led first to an awareness that German presence in Italy was substantial, then, further, to the fact that the oltramontani dominated aspects of instrumental music. This knowledge of the German contribution led, in turn, to a substantial reappraisal of the formative stages of ensemble performance practices.

For a large part of Western music history we are forced to interpret in the absence of signs. The appearance in the ninth century of a system of signs to represent music thus not only comes as something of a relief but also raises certain questions. How would the signs have been understood? How would something with no immediate history have been comprehended? Recent answers to such questions have placed notational signs within the context of oral history, positing a degree of continuity and interaction across oral and literate domains. Much insight has been gained through this awareness of oral issues, and it is not intended to challenge claims made in this area.

Music historians are virtually unanimous in attributing the source of early Christian psalmody to the synagogue. In this they follow the vast majority of liturgical scholars, Protestant and Catholic alike. There is, after all, considerable plausibility to the view: nascent Christianity was a Jewish sect and its first liturgical gatherings shared with the synagogue its most revolutionary characteristic – the coming together of co-religionists in a meeting room rather than the witnessing of sacrifice in a temple court. Moreover, the liturgical practices of these gatherings resembled those of the synagogue; in particular the so-called ‘liturgy of the Word’ that preceded the Eucharist appears to have been modelled after the scripture-centred order of synagogue worship. And when one observes that the principal vehicle of early Christian chant was the Old Testament Book of Psalms it seems a natural assumption that the singing of those psalms was a practice borrowed from the synagogue. The present author shared this assumption until coming to question it when pursuing a related topic. The study that follows is a fulfilment of the intention stated then to explore the subject more thoroughly. In doing so it is necessary to begin with a general examination of Jewish liturgy in the time of Jesus, both the liturgy of the Temple and that of the synagogue.

Il finera car touz iourz vivre

Ne pourra pas.

(He will meet his end, for he cannot live for ever)

The ensemble of texts brought together in the celebrated MS 146 of the fonds français in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, makes up a complex and many-sided essay on government and kingship, one directed to the French monarch Philip V (1317–22) at or near the beginning of his reign. Its various elements reflect on the problem-laden final years of the rule of his father, Philip IV ‘le Bel’ (1285-1314), and the troubled succession that followed in 1315 and 1316. Each fascicle of the manuscript, the so-called Roman de Fauvel, the dits of Geffroi de Paris, the collection of songs and dits ascribed to Jehannot de Lescurel, and the anonymous verse chronicle of the years 1300–16, interacts with the others in myriad ways and on many levels to yield a collective commentary on the state of the monarchy and the realm, and an admonitio on wise rule.

The great ceremonies of the Middle Ages and Renaissance have an uncomfortable position in music history. Contemporary descriptions of such events have survived from all over Europe through the centuries, and they are often full of vivid and quotable detail. For all its rich abundance, however, the documentation surrounding these large ceremonies has proved in a number of ways difficult to interpret. First, it is usually impossible to connect the official ceremonial accounts securely to specific, known pieces of music. Second, it is the nature of secular documents to omit as beneath their purview many of the musical details that we today regard as indispensable – the chroniclers were always maddeningly more interested in the musicians' clothing than in, say, their instrumentation. Third, and perhaps most important as we strive towards a balanced, street-level view of music in medieval and Renaissance life, the ceremonies that got the biggest descriptions tended to be the most extraordinary events of their day, unique by definition and held for the most rarefied and least representative audiences. The people who attended the Feast of the Pheasant or the meetings of the Order of the Golden Fleece were no cross-section of their society, and it is hard to know exactly how much of what we learn about their music can be applied to anything we might call real life.

Perhaps the best-known songs of Antoine Busnoys are those whose texts conceal in acrostics or puns some form of the name ‘Jacqueline d'Aqueville’ (for the song texts and translations see Appendix 1).The first letters in each line of A vous sans autre (no. 2) and Je ne puis vivre ainsi toujours (no. 3) yield the acrostics ‘A Iaqveljne’ and ‘Jaqueljne d'Aqvevjle’ respectively; the first line of A que ville est abhominable (no. 4) makes a pun on the surname ‘Aqueville’; and the incipit of Ja que lui ne si actende (no. 1) forms an ambiguous series of monosyllables that can also be read as the name ‘Jaqueline’.

The manuscript Montpellier, Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire, Section Médecine, H 196 (hereafter called Mo) has long claimed a place as one of the musical monuments of the thirteenth century. It is one of the most comprehensive sources of the early motet and is by far the largest anthology of French three-voice motets. It has long been thought that Mo was compiled in a number of stages that reflect gradual changes in musical notation and style during the second half of the thirteenth century. This assumption has been used to date repertory, theorists and composers.

Niccolò Fausti, master of ceremonies at St Mark's Venice from 1576 to 1598, in one of his several additions at the back of a manuscript ceremoniale of 1564, lists the days on which Vespers in the ducal basilica were performed by two choirs of singers.

The French orientation of Florentine music in the second half of the Trecento, particularly with regard to the practice and theory of notation, has been recognised by music historians since the surveys of medieval sources and style made by Johannes Wolf and Friedrich Ludwig at the beginning of this century. The evidence for the ‘contenance française’ that has been most frequently cited includes texting procedures in three-voice compositions, structural features (such as the appearance of verto and chiuso endings in the polyphonic ballata), textual gallicisms and the presence of French compositions in Florentine musical manuscripts. The network of transmission which accounts for the appearance of these features in Italian music and musical sources has remained a matter for speculation. The fusion of French and Florentine traits of style in the last quarter of the fourteenth century has traditionally been viewed, at least in part, as a result of presumed personal contacts between French and Italian composers. The changing face of musical style does not, however, reflect a totally independent musical process; style is a function of the tastes and demands of an audience, as well as of the artistic personalities of specific composers. Florentine receptivity to French stylistic influences was determined by a number of factors, not the least important of which was the nature of the audience for music.

In the early spring of 1608 a calamity befell the Gonzaga court at Mantua with the sudden death of their young virtuoso singer, Caterina Martinelli. And the shock felt at her untimely demise was made all the worse by the realisation that the court's prestige and the standing of Duke Vincenzo himself were thereby threatened. More precisely, what was at risk were the elaborate plans that the Mantuans had made – plans in which Caterina Martinelli had figured very prominently – for an extraordinary series of musical-theatrical events to be held later in that spring to which the whole world (or at least all of it that mattered) had been invited.

Dated to the 1240s, the Florence manuscript (F: Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 29.1) is the earliest surviving source to contain a collection of motets. The exclusively Latin-texted motets in F are widely regarded as the oldest layer(s) of pieces in this new genre. This study closely analyses three motets in F, demonstrating that they are Latin contrafacta reworkings of vernacular motets extant only in chronologically later sources. It traces the influences of secular, vernacular refrains in two supposedly liturgical clausulae in F, proposing that these clausulae are textless transcriptions of French motets, and engages with wider questions concerning scribal practices, the relationship between sine littera and cum littera notations and issues of consonance and dissonance. Reasons as to why clausulae might have been transcribed in F and the possible extent of vernacular influences in this manuscript are explored. These findings challenge established chronological narratives of motet development. The three case studies offer methodological models, demonstrating ways in which relationships between clausulae and Latin and French motets can be tested and their relative chronologies established.