Only in the last few years has detailed research into Umbrian music, particularly that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, begun to appear, and until now there has been no study devoted entirely to music publishing in the region. At present we know of thirty-two books of music printed at Perugia, Assisi and Orvieto between 1577 and 1650, but there may well have been more. Since some are known only indirectly, from vague references found in intermediate sources, it is reasonable to assume that other books have been lost without trace. Our knowledge of the publishers of this music is fragmentary and incomplete, and the same often applies to the various composers, so that the historian is confronted with a picture rendered unusually indistinct by absences and losses. However, such information as we do possess, together with the surviving printed material, offers valuable evidence for the composition and circulation of music in the towns of Umbria during this period.

To students of sixteenth-century music the Florentine man of letters Cosimo Bartoli (1503–72) is known chiefly for two statements made in the third dialogue of his Ragionamenti Accademici. One is a comparison of sculptors and musicians, with Donatello and Ockeghem seen as precursors of Michelangelo and Josquin. The other is an encomium of Verdelot, called the greatest composer after Josquin, to which is added the name of Arcadelt who ‘faithfully trod in the footsteps of Verdelot’. A number of musicologists have noticed that Bartoli had quite a lot more than this to say about music, and have cited other remarks from his work; but no one has to my knowledge dealt with the whole of the musical section of the Ragionamenti, and only Bartoli's recent and very excellent biographer Judith Bryce has spoken of the subject in the context of its author's career and personality.

The chapel of St Mark's in Venice occupied a prominent place in the musical life of most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so that a Venetian writer could justly remark: ‘The chapel of these Lords is thought to be among the best in the world, and [singers] have come to serve from France and Spain.’ Yet, in spite of its importance in the history of Western music, our knowledge of its development and organisation is far from complete and contains large gaps. It will suffice to point out that we know a lot more about the Gabrielis – organists – than we do about Zarlino in his capacity as maestro and composer, that the first modern study of the chapel, barely eight years old, is the recent Vespers at St Mark's by James Moore, and that the venerable Storia della musica sacra nella già cappella ducale di S. Marco in Venezia by Francesco Caffi, the only comprehensive study of the subject, has, in default of more modern work, been reprinted several times in recent years. The situation is gradually improving, with several new studies on music in Venice and at St Mark's already available or in preparation, but one of the issues not yet treated adequately is the question of patronage at St Mark's and of the social and economic status of its singers.

In the years since Craig Wright published his study of Du Fay at Cambrai interest in the composer has grown apace. In his recent study of the composer David Fallows has given us a ‘rich harvest of “adjusted” information’ concerning Du Fay's life as well as valuable insights into the music. This study is a continuation of the process of adjusting details in our view of Du Fay's life and his work. It presents new documents and some hypotheses based upon them and upon consideration of the cultural and liturgical traditions that shaped Du Fay's life and his work. I shall start with what is perhaps the most tenuous of these hypotheses because it comes chronologically at the beginning: it concerns the matter of Du Fay's birth date.

Any assessment of a fifteenth-century court musician failing to take account of those extra-musical activities – be they juridical, administrative, liturgical or whatever – which almost invariably constituted an intrinsic part of that musician's overall function must be deemed at best flawed, at worst a chronic perpetuation of that romanticising instinct to dislocate music from its integral rôle as a morally and spiritually heightening force in the court's social structure. This is not, of course, to deny the acceleration in the emergence both of the ‘professional’ musician and of a more autonomous musical language, together with the potential for a similar though less tangible degree of autonomy in the public and private response to that music, all of which undoubtedly seems to have taken place in the fifteenth century. But, to take the practical case of Tinctoris, it is clear that, aside from his musical skills and the political attractions to Naples of forging cultural links with the Burgundian—Netherlandish circles of influence, a high-level training in canon and civil law would have contributed in no small measure to the securing of his post at the Neapolitan court of King Ferrante, and, more specifically, was probably a major factor in his being commissioned by royal mandate, soon after his arrival in Italy, to translate into Italian the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece for his new employer, on the occasion of Ferrante's election to knighthood of the order.