In classifying primary musical documents from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, we are dependent upon a variety of techniques of music-historical research – analysis of watermarks, repertory, concordances, the cultural and historical contexts – which furnish the means for evaluating the authority of the sources, ‘the degree of presumptive similarity to the lost … autograph’. One of the principal points in attempting to establish the credentials of the primary sources for the Josquin motets is that they contain alternative readings that condition our perception of the pieces. The choice of readings will inevitably depend on our ability to identify those sources that preserve more authoritative redactions for a given work. A number of techniques are ordinarily used for assessing these sources: (1) that a source is taken prima facie as representing the best tradition that we can discern is an assumption based on its time and place of origin; (2) details of filiation as documented in the variants themselves can suggest lines of transmission and the relative plausibility of sets of readings; and (3) some sources may assume greater importance because they preserve redactions that conform to convictions about Josquin's style. While each of these techniques has something to recommend it, the last assumes considerably more refined criteria than we now possess for describing Josquin's compositional practices, and a considerably broader and deeper knowledge of his whole oeuvre than most of us possess. For, as has been pointed out, ‘the textual critic must often choose, on the basis of his knowledge of such things as the style of the author or the scribal practices of the period, those variants upon which he wishes to base his stemma. Classical philologists have centuries of experience and a multitude of examples to draw upon when confronted with choices between anomalous readings; music historians have no such storehouse of knowledge.‘ Since many of the variant readings in question are equally plausible, very often the choices are not between versions that are manifestly erroneous, on the one hand, and those that are not, on the other, but between equally acceptable versions, each of which is musically permissible. The first two of the techniques referred to above afford a more systematic and objective means at this time for ranking the primary source material, and a basis on which to advance tentative hypotheses of plausible content that suggest ways of determining what an authoritative version of a piece would look like.

The giving of gifts or ‘bribes’ in return for official favours was an immutable fact of life in oriental society that Europeans who travelled to the East in the service of religious or commercial interests had no choice but to accept. Permission to open a trading station or a mission would rarely be granted unless the request were accompanied by a present of some substance. The initial gift, moreover, would inevitably inspire many demands for similar treatment by subordinate officials in whose hands lay considerable power to disrupt the ordered patterns of daily life. The choice of suitable objects for presentation was thus an abiding concern of every European organization with interests in the East. There was general agreement that cheap trinkets which might be used to good effect to buy off an African chief would be regarded as an insult in any of the great oriental courts. To appear before the Sultan or the Great Mughal with a feeble or even a mildly inadequate offering was to put at risk the very interests in which the gifts were given. Failure to please could be doubly damaging if a rival European organization were able to make good the disappointment. A balance had therefore to be struck between the need for goods that displayed the best aspects of European artistry, craftsmanship and mechanical ingenuity and the need to keep costs to a reasonable level. The musical gift which most closely matched these requirements was a keyboard instrument of some kind: a harpsichord, for instance, could be painted attractively and displayed as an objet d'art; with its method of sound reproduction, it could also be presented as a mechanical device; it was certain to be regarded as a novelty; and, most important of all, the costs of its manufacture and transportation and the wages of the single musician hired to accompany it would not be prohibitive. For all these reasons, organs, harpsichords and virginals occupy a very significant place in the history of Renaissance oriental diplomacy, especially during the period from c. 1575 to c. 1625 when the old Portuguese empire began its decline in the face of fierce competition from the commercial interests of the Dutch and English nations.

The concept of music as science, still a vital part of the natural philosophy of the seventeenth century, found a strong advocate in the early Royal Society, whose agenda frequently embraced musical topics. From the organization's inception in 1660 to the early eighteenth century the Society's minutes recount acoustical experiments performed at meetings and describe papers on topics ranging from string vibrations to music's medicinal powers.

Alfred, Dvořåk's first opera, has long hovered at the edge of our awareness of the composer. If there are signs of a growing realization that opera was to Dvořåk quite as important as other areas of his output, the detail needed to flesh out the picture of ‘Dvořåk the opera composer’ is to a large extent lacking. In the case of the composer's first six operas the inaccessibility of material has meant that an assessment of his early work in the area is still very much the province of specialist scholars. Published vocal scores exist for only three of these early operas, and none of them are in any sense scholarly editions; in the case of Krål a uhlíř (King and Charcoal-Burner) the available edition is of a revision of the score made 13 years after the work was composed, with an entirely recomposed final act. Vanda, the fascinating first version of Krål a uhlíř, and Alfred remain unpublished, although a vocal score of Krål a uhlíř has been submitted to the Czech publishing house Artia.