RRE-eminently a perishable medium, music is compelled by its very nature to rely upon repetition for enduring effect. In this respect the history of any musical form is inseparable from the larger narrative of the institutions that made such repetition both possible and necessary. For Renaissance Europe this close connection between performance and circumstance seems especially important : in this age musical sounds were not only objects for aesthetic contemplation, they were also the necessary attributes of a civilized community, the persuasive instruments of spiritual enlightenment, and even symbols of social prestige. To retell the central musical developments in France during the middle years of the sixteenth century is consequently to rehearse the sweeping social, religious, and intellectual changes at work in Europe's most populous realm.

MUSIC AT COURT

The economic and political influence of aristocratic households played a central role in the formation of tastes and the production of music during the middle years of the sixteenth century. It was at court that patronage was distributed, an economic lure that attracted singers from provincial choirs and instrumentalists— not just from France, but IItaly, too—to the seats of power. Thus the most powerful dynastic powers of sixteenth-century France—the Valois kings, the dukes of Lorraine and Guise, the French cardinals and bishops—were also among its most influential patrons of music. Their travels, and the subtle rivalry of consumption that their elevated social positions engendered, put into motion processes of musical production that had pervasive influence on musical life throughout the kingdom. A musician working in the royal maison during the reign (1515–47) of King Francois i would by ancient convention have belonged to one of three separate departments of this vast (but surprisingly mobile) juggernaut of official attendants : a staff of domestic servants (the chambre), clerics and singers charged with the observance of sacred liturgy (the chapelle), and officials for public ceremony and military protection (the ecurie). Each of these administrative divisions carried with it an implied set of social circumstances, constraints whose operation can at times be detected in the music of those who sang and played at court.