Modern understanding of uses and performance practices in Italian fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sacred polyphony is based largely on investigations of important institutions (court chapels, cathedrals, important sanctuaries such as Sant’ Antonio in Padua) and important occasions. By virtue of their special status such forums are, however, exceptions to general rules at work in Italy: evidence of what is more characteristic about sacred music of any period is not to be found where repertories and practices are deliberately conceived to transcend the quotidian. In order to identify common practices and grasp the continuity of traditions, systematic research on the lesser-known, yet richly informative, archives of minor institutions (parish and monastic churches, guilds and confraternities) provides a broader and hence more reliable perspective. Some recent studies have taken this direction. However, several of them are partial, insofar as they are based on data regarding only female monasteries or important confraternities; in our view, productive practices are best investigated as a complex but unitary system which embraces institutions of every kind. Our essay draws on a view of medieval and Renaissance church polyphony based fundamentally on the idea of tradition and continuity in the context of a widespread and daily use of the repertories, as we have described elsewhere, and looks at one aspect of Renaissance performance practice through specific evidence interpreted in the context of this new perspective.

Daily Practice and Tradition

Our research on the uses of music was conducted with reference to sample cities of various sizes and geographical locations in the Venetian Republic: Venice, Treviso, Conegliano, Salo, Cividate Camuno (in the Valcamonica near Brescia), Šibenik, Veglia and Candia. Studies of other urban centres on the Italian peninsula suggest that the results are no less applicable in their essentials to cities beyond the historical confines of the Veneto. In synthesis, these results are as follows:

1. The musical activities of court chapels and major churches represent a mere fraction of activities as a whole. In Venice, not only the Scuole Grandi (documented in studies by Jonathan Glixon) but also several of the most important monastic churches and richest parish churches maintained more or less permanent groups of musicians. Churches without their own cappella musicale – that is, the majority of churches – engaged professional singers and instrumentalists for their most important feast days.