The Italians had conflicting sentiments regarding the visit of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV in Italy in 1355: from the enthusiastic expectations of the impact the Emperor would have on the local political life to contemptuous scepticism and even to overt disdain. Two Italian Trecento madrigals have traditionally been considered to refer to this visit: (1) the three-voice polytextual madrigal Aquil altera/Creatura gentil/Uccel di Dio by Jacopo da Bologna, seen as related to Charles’s coronation with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan; and (2) the two-voice madrigal Sovran uccello by Donato da Firenze, considered a celebratory piece for Charles’s coronation as well. This essay explores the relevant historical contexts, Milanese for Jacopo’s madrigal and Florentine for Donato’s, with a view to placing both pieces.

This article examines Pierre Attaingnant’s motet series (1535–9), with special attention to the rubrics assigned to the titles of books and to individual motets. The role of the rubric as an organisational tool and its relation to contemporary liturgical and devotional practices is explored, revealing a strikingly cohesive series and connections to liturgical books and books of hours. A consideration of the use of the motet texts in other types of books and the uses suggested by Attaingnant’s rubrics reveals that the printer was promoting the use of Paris in his series. This study also revisits the issue of the function of the motet in sixteenth-century France. Finally, in the light of several connections between this series and the French royal court, the role of motets in the devotional life of Francis I and the possibility that this series served as an extension of the king’s political influence are examined.

Modern understanding of the production and dissemination of thirteenth-century polyphony is constrained by the paucity of manuscript sources that have been preserved in their entirety; the panorama of sources of medieval polyphony is essentially fragmentary. Some of the surviving fragments, however, were torn from lost books of polyphony that were to some extent comparable to well-known extant codices. The fragment of polyphony preserved in the binding of manuscript 6528 of the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid is illustrative in this respect. This fragment displays a number of codicological and musical features that are strikingly similar to those of the Florence manuscript (F). Both sources share format and mise-en-page, make use of similar styles of script, notation and pen-work decoration, transmit the pieces in the same order, and present virtually identical musical readings. The Madrid fragment thus provides new evidence for a standardised production of polyphonic books in thirteenth-century Paris. The study provides a detailed account of the fragment’s codicological and philological features, and explores the hypothesis that it originated in the same Parisian workshop that produced F.

Whilst scholars often rely on a close reading of the score to understand English musical style at the turn of the fifteenth century, a study of the compositional techniques composers were taught provides complementary evidence of how and why specific stylistic traits came to dominate this repertory. This essay examines the relationship between practical and theoretical sources in late medieval England, demonstrating a link between the writings of two Oxford-educated musicians, John Tucke and John Dygon, and the polyphonic repertory of the Eton Choirbook (Eton College Library, MS 178), compiled c. 1500–4. Select case studies from this manuscript suggest that compositional and notational solutions adopted at the turn of the fifteenth century, having to do particularly with metrical proportions, echo music-theoretical concepts elucidated by Tucke and Dygon. These findings impinge upon the current debate concerning the presence of a network between educational institutions in the south-east of England during this period.

Prior to the famous Hartker Antiphoner (Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 390/391), copied in Sankt Gallen c. 1000, there survives no complete, fully-notated witness to the Romano-Frankish chant repertory for the Office. Scholars have long known about the related tonary, possibly a decade older, in which the Sankt Gallen repertory is to be found ordered by melody. But unrecognised until now are the remains of a second tonary (Stadtarchiv Goslar, Handschriftenfragmente MThMu 1/1), datable to the early tenth century. The combined testimony of these two tonaries, together with other surviving fragments, is taken as the basis for a reassessment of the Office repertory in tenth-century Sankt Gallen. Nineteenth-century scholarship gave Hartker’s Antiphoner an arguably undeserved reputation as an authorised monument of Gregorian Chant. This view seems unsustainable in the light of many apparent editorial interventions, yet it may be precisely what the monks had set out to achieve.

In the decades around 1600 many privileges for printed music were issued by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Elector of Saxony. Such privileges gave a bookseller or author an exclusive right to publish specified works for a limited period (usually ten years). The privileges threatened confiscation of any unauthorised copies, and fines for anyone caught printing or selling them. This article offers the first systematic study of archival material documenting the privileges for music, as preserved in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna, and the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden. It reconstructs the ritualistic procedure for obtaining a privilege, analyses how composers justified their applications for privileges, and asks whether privileges gave effective protection against unauthorised editions. Revising previous interpretations of the privilege system as an early form of copyright, I instead argue that privileges enhanced the commercial and symbolic value of printed music.