In Italy during the late cinquecento, printed music could be found not only in the homes of the wealthy or the music professional, but also in lay homes, courts, and academies. No longer confined to the salons of the elite, music took on the role of social play and recreation. Paul Schleuse examines these new musical forms through a study of the music books of Italian priest, poet, and composer, Orazio Vecchi. Composed for minor patrons and the wider music-buying public, Vecchi's madrigals took as their subjects game-playing, drinking, hunting, battles, and the life of the street. Schleuse looks at how music and game-playing allowed singers and performers to play the roles of exemplary pastoral characters and also comic, foreign, and "rustic" others in ways that defined and ultimately reinforced social norms of the times. His findings reposition Orazio Vecchi as one of the most innovative composers of the late 16th century.

Valentin Haussmann was a highly regarded composer in his time whose works had great popular appeal and were frequently reprinted, anthologized, and copied in lute or keyboard arrangements. His extensive travels and pioneering spirit led him to search out interesting repertories, such as Italian villanellas, canzonettas, and balletti which he published with his own German texts, as well as Polish dances which he heard in East Prussia. The main body of this catalogue is organized by musical sources, expanded to include manuscript sources, lost works, works in seventeenth-century collections, works edited by Haussmann with his own German texts, modern manuscript copies, and works by other composers using Haussmann's melodies or texts. Many sources, listed as lost in recent bibliographies, have been located and are included here. Title pages, dedications, laudatory poems, and letters are transcribed in full, and Cantus incipits are provided in musical notation. Additional sections include an Index of First Lines, two indexes of Cantus incipits (one indicating pitches and rhythms, the other interval progression), a listing of works in modern editions, and an extensive bibliography. This catalogue will be a basic research tool for anyone investigating the history of German music at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Vinci produced a string of operas during a brief career of little more than a decade. He died mysteriously. He was hailed by connoisseurs of the later 18th century as one of the originators of the classical style.