Powerful conclusions are central to the esthetic world this book describes. Many pieces trade on the so-called drive to the cadence; others feature deliberate ratchetings down. This chapter discusses seven heterogeneous examples, each extraordinary in its own right: songs by Johannes Okeghem and the little-known Malcort, a motet by Johannes Regis, and mass music by Jacob Obrecht, Josquin des Prez, Alexander Agricola, and an anonymous composer.

The council’s principal ruling on sacred music, its condemnation of the “intermingling of anything wanton or impure,” took aim at immoderate practices such as self-indulgent virtuosity, complex counterpoint that obscured verbal texts, and the incorporation of music originally associated with lascivious lyrics. Other rulings, although they make no explicit reference to music, also affected its production and consumption. Recent research has focused especially on changes in convent music following the council’s call for the strict claustration of nuns, and on the publication of the Tridentine missal and breviary, which inspired revisions to Gregorian chant that remained authoritative until the beginning of the twentieth century.