A 1481 date for the manuscript Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, MS K. 1. 2 (hereafter Si), which contains almost ninety pieces of late fifteenth-century liturgical polyphony including works of Obrecht, Isaac and Mouton, has rested uneasily upon an argument from Sienese copying records. A fresh codicological analysis of this important source, including evidence of matching ‘twin’ watermark pairs in datable Tuscan archival documents, has yielded a new date and a new narrative for its compilation. The main corpus, in fact, is decades later than the fragmentary appendix containing works of Dufay and Josquin. The redating presented here has manifold implications for some of the most important composers of the late fifteenth century, and for peninsular patterns of musical transmission. A secure early date for the appendix copy of Josquin's Missa L'ami baudichon, for instance, enables a reassessment of that piece's transmission to sources as far away as Poland and Bohemia in the light of recent discoveries in Josquin's biography. My new date for Josquin's mass also confirms a case of Josquin emulation within another, anonymous mass in Si. The new dating further enables a reassessment of ModE M.1.13's authority as a source for one of Johannes Martini's masses, and the identification of a heretofore unknown local Sienese composer. Finally, the new narrative for the Siena choirbook may reveal Florence as a link in the transmission of repertory from Milan and Ferrara to Siena.

Although the castrato played a central role in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century musical life, he occupied a position at the margins of early modern society. As a consequence of the surgical alteration of his body and the superior musical training that he received as compensation for his ‘acquiescence’ in that act, he found himself navigating a path through a bifurcated world. For him, the surgery had both public and private consequences: while society would publicly celebrate his vocal virtuosity, it would also circumscribe his private activities, and withhold from him the right to marry, or to enjoy an intimate relationship with a woman. As he soon realised, the realities of his special status meant that many of those who would revel in his phenomenal vocal abilities would also ridicule him as effeminate and as a sexual misfit, and would accuse him, ironically, of possessing a voracious sexual appetite that rendered him a threat to women. When he travelled north to work in German-speaking societies, particularly those in which the Lutheran confession held sway, that simple migratory act instantly compounded the number of those qualities that contributed to his ‘Otherness’: while in his homeland his standing as an emasculate and a musician already set him apart from others, in Lutheran regions, his status as a foreigner, an adherent of an outlawed (and highly suspect) confession, and a member of a privileged group that moved in the rarefied atmosphere of the local court all served to intensify his marginality.

Late in the year 1028, Adémar de Chabannes embarked on an ambitious and audacious project to create a new liturgy for the Feast of Saint Martial that would venerate its honoree as an apostle. It is difficult to exaggerate the monstrous nature of the venture and the claim it supported. The historical Martial was well known from the works of Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century historian, as a third-century Roman missionary to Aquitaine and first bishop of Limoges. There his burial place became an important pilgrimage destination and the eventual site of a Benedictine monastery founded in Martial's memory. Adémar, with the full support of the abbot, Odolric, and monks of the abbey of Saint-Martial, and Bishop Jordan of Limoges, sought to transform the historical Martial into a first-century Jew, younger cousin of Simon Peter, an intimate of Jesus himself, whom he served at the Last Supper, Saint Peter's personal delegate to Gaul, and a saint of apostolic rank.

The tenor occupies a special role in vernacular motets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: not only does it underpin the melodies of the upper voices contrapuntally, it also provides intellectual and interpretative undergirding for the texts of these pieces. The biblical or liturgical context of a tenor, drawing on well-understood exegetical and literary traditions, often facilitates an allegorical reading of the upper voices, and vice versa. Because of the foundational nature of the tenor within the Ars nova motet in particular, the identification of the exact musico-liturgical sources of this voice, where possible, is of special significance. While the origins of most of Machaut's twenty-one Latin tenors have been identified, the tenor of one work, Motet 5 (Aucune gent/Qui plus aimme/ T. Fiat voluntas tua, hereafter M5), is alleged to have a most unusual source. I offer new observations about the tenor of M5 that emphasise certain compositional procedures congruent with Machaut's practice in writing his motets and may tie together the various secular and sacred references in the piece.

In 1571 and 1581, the Ferrarese cleric-musician Don Lodovico Agostini published two books each containing, amongst other pieces, a group of madrigals cryptically notated as musical puzzles, advertised as enigmi musicali on their title pages. The enigmi are aptly named; no doubt the composer would have delighted in the doppiosenso, or double entendre, inherent in the term, for they are musical riddles in both a formal and a metaphorical sense. Their content and their very existence in print pose an intriguing array of questions beyond the obvious enquiries regarding the identifying characteristics of the genre and the identity of their composer. Certainly, the enigmi musicali invite speculation about the nature of music as a pastime in late sixteenth-century courtly Italy. Agostini's enigmi musicali are secular, polyphonic vocal works, but they cannot be classed simply as madrigals, nor are they representative of so-called lighter genres of villanelle or canzonette. They exist somewhere on the fringe of the repertoire, with a specific character that reaches in towards the (to us) more familiar forms of Italian secular music, but that also reaches out to and overlaps with other spheres of play and philosophical engagement. So where may the enigmi be placed within the wider compass of early modern social recreation, and what factors might have motivated their composition and their use? Furthermore, if we accept them as evidence of some sort of collective diversion, how are they intended to amuse – are they humorous or cerebral, or both?