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The composition of enigmatic canons reached a high point in the last three decades of the fifteenth century; many composers were moved to try their hand at them, but the outstanding exponents were Antoine Busnoys, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin des Prez. Instead of the straightforward Latin instructions that accompanied canons of the earlier fifteenth century, enigmatic inscriptions became favoured, often taken from the Bible or classical literature. An examination of the large corpus revealed that canonic compositions fall into fourteen categories: addition, augmentation, diminution, extraction, interval canon, inversion, mensuration, omission, ostinato, rearrangement, retrograde, substitution, tacet, and transposition. The more enigmatic types are discussed, including some that resist understanding.

In an earlier article, ‘The Sign of Petrucci’s Editor’ (in Venezia 1501: Petrucci e la stampa musicale, ed. Giulio Cattin and Patrizia Dalla Vecchia [Venice, 2005]), I showed that from 1502 on Petrus Castellanus imposed a particular sign in Petrucci’s editions to indicate sesquialtera proportion, a circle over the figure 3. The present article examines occurrences of this sign in manuscripts before 1500, where it is found mainly in the works of Antoine Busnoys and Jacob Obrecht. In a number of cases the presence of this sign has suggested or confirmed (in conjunction with other evidence) their authorship of anonymous compositions. A line of influence is traced from Petrus de Domarto, who may have originated the sign, to Busnoys, and then to Obrecht. Seventeen other compositions using the sign, including three by Alexander Agricola, are considered.

Civic rituals that centered on saints constituted one of the most widely shared and generally positive experiences that humans could have in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. This chapter describes humanists' commemoration of saints in the official ritual of the liturgy. For the humanists, the Office was also a form of public oratory, local history, rhetorical display, and civic education that stood to profit from their professional attention. The Italian peninsula is a logical place to look for the classicizers' efforts at liturgical revision. The part of the Divine Office that especially attracted humanist attention was the day's first round of prayer, known as Matins. The officiant could find the Matins texts gathered in the Sanctorale, a specially designated part of the breviary. Fifteenth-century humanists' ideas about the liturgy are usually discussed in light of two early sixteenth-century texts. Finally, the chapter describes four Matins offices: Maffeo Vegio's Office, Tommaso Schifaldo's Office, Pietro Ransano's Office and Raffaele Maffei's Office.

‘Salve, regina, mater misericordiae … ad te clamamus … ad te suspiramus’: when this lovely Marian antiphon is sung, whether by one person or many, it is intoned on behalf of all mankind. ‘Ave sanctissima Maria … libera me ab omni malo; ora pro peccato meo’: when this prayer is said, it is the individual who begs the Virgin's intercession, who pleads for her to free him from evil, who asks her to pray for his sins. Prayers in the first person singular, a direct address on the most personal level, I and thou, are usually private. It would seem surprising to find them set to music for several voices, and yet settings begin to appear towards the end of the fifteenth century. What does it mean to sing one of these prayers? For whom do the singers sing: each for himself? each for all the other singers? for the listeners?

In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari mentions many artists who were talented at music when they were young, prominently Giorgione and Sebastiano del Piombo. Benvenuto Cellini resisted his father's pressure to choose music. Why? How rewarding was a musical profession in Renaissance Italy? It could be very lucrative, both for town musicians such as Cellini's father and for castratos. Moonlighting for banquets, dances, even spying, could bring in additional income. For gentlemen, music was a necessary social grace; they had private tutors, such as Silvestro Ganassi dal Fontego, who was himself a painter as well as a printer. Amateurs could learn from cathedral choirmasters, who were often music theorists, the pinnacle of the profession. The theorist Pietro Aaron, choirmaster at Imola Cathedral, then tutor to the sons of Sebastian Michiel, Grand Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Venice, had a wide acquaintance among humanists, noblemen and other musicians, and his letters open a window on the life of a musician. Among his many professions, the writer Antonfrancesco Doni counted music; a madrigal he wrote in 1560 is included in an appendix. The ability to improvise verses and music was much prized, ranging from star performers such as Serafino Aquilano to amateurs such as Niccolò Machiavelli. Portraits of musicians are discussed; they offer important evidence but are difficult to interpret. The theorist Lodovico Zacconi concluded in 1592 that being a musician was not only an honourable and lucrative profession but an enjoyable one.

Our knowledge of musical sources in that crucial and mysterious decade that Alfred Einstein termed an "artistic pause," the 1520os, has greatly expanded in the last thirty years. Three major landmarks have been Catherine Weeks Chapman's 1964 dissertation on Andrea Antico (followed by her 1968 article "Printed Collections of Polyphonic Music Owned by Ferdinand Columbus"), Knud Jeppesen's La Frottola (1968-70), and lain Fenlon and James Haar's The Italian Madrigal in the Early Sixteenth Century: Sources and Interpretation (1988), a masterly work that brings together decades of research on the topic and revises our notions of the early history of the madrigal. I should like to contribute a small footnote to that enterprise as a birthday offering to James Haar. The pursuit of books led Ferdinand Columbus, on forays at home and four trips abroad, to acquire some 172 printed books of music published between 1503 and 1534. Many of these have disappeared from the Biblioteca Colombina over the centuries, and today we are almost totally dependent on the catalogues of his collection for knowledge of what he owned. These are remarkably informative since they typically list not only the title, place of publication, and date, but also the format, number of pieces, and title of the first piece (sometimes also the last); occasionally he noted where he purchased the book and for how much.' Thanks to his detailed listings, Catherine Weeks

‘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.