Based primarily on previously unpublished documents, the studies assembled here in this first selection by Frank D'Accone set the background for the musical efflorescence that occurred in Florence in the later 15th century and for the emergence in the early 16th century of a new Florentine school of composers. He traces the origins and development of musical chapels at the Cathedral and Baptistery, and the growth of musical establishments at several other churches such as the Santissima Annunziata, Santa Trinita and San Lorenzo.

Based on previously unpublished documents, Frank D'Accone sets the background for the musical efflorescence that occurred in Florence in the later 15th century and the emergence in the early 16th century of a new Florentine school of composers. Tracing the origins and development of musical chapels at the Cathedral and Baptistery, and the growth of musical establishments at several other churches such as the Santissima Annunziata, Santa Trinita and San Lorenzo, D'Accone examines the effect of Medici patronage, on the one hand, and the impact of Savonarola, on the other, and at the careers of individual composers such as Heinrich Isaac.

This second selection of studies by Frank D’Accone, again based principally on the documentary evidence, follows the development through the mid 16th century of musical chapels at the Cathedral and the Baptistery of Florence and of musical establishments at the Santissima Annunziata and San Lorenzo. The lives, careers and works of composers associated with these churches are illustrated and their works analyzed, particularly the theoretical treatise by Fra Mauro, the madrigals of Mauro Matti and the ambitiously conceived canzone cycle of Mattia Rampollini. The final studies, moving into the 17th century, look at the music for Holy Week, and the unprecedented programme of performances at Santa Maria Novella.

Relatively little is known about musical and religious life in Renaissance Florence and the aspirations of its average citizens. This book documents and interprets the corporate patronage of a significant Florentine musical repertory over a period of some 200 years.

This collection of reprinted essays starts from the author's doctoral research on Jacopo Peri and the rise of opera and solo song in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Florence. It extends to broader issues concerning music and patronage in the city as they affected individual composers, patrons and institutions, and thence to the commerce of music printing and the book trade. It concludes with an attempt to suggest a broader view of these various issues as they impact upon musical life in the 'provinces' in Tuscany. There is a great deal of new documentary and other information here, but the aim is also to expand methodological horizons so as to prompt new ways of thinking about music in its contexts.

Euridice was one of several music-theatrical works commissioned to celebrate the wedding of Maria de' Medici and King Henri IV of France in Florence in October 1600. As the first 'opera' to survive complete, it has been viewed as a landmark work, but its libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini and music by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini have tended to be studied in the abstract rather than as something to be performed in a specific time and place. Staging “Euridice” explores how newly-discovered documents can be used to precisely reconstruct every aspect of its original stage and sets in the room for which it was intended in the Palazzo Pitti. By also taking into account what the singers and instrumentalists did, what the audience saw and heard, and how things changed from creation through rehearsals to performance, this book brings new aspects of Euridice to light in startling ways.

For more than three decades Richard Charteris has researched European music, sources and collections, focusing particularly on late Renaissance England, Germany and Italy. This group of essays, many concerning previously unknown or unexplored works and materials, covers the 16th and early to mid 17th centuries. The studies involve variously 'new' compositions, music manuscripts and editions, and documents that relate to figures such as the Italians Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Monteverdi and Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder, the Germans Hans Leo Hassler and Adam Gumpelzhaimer, as well as the Englishmen John Coprario, John Dowland, John Jenkins, Henry Lawes, William Lawes, Peter Philips, and the French composer Marin Marais. In addition, Charteris elucidates contemporary performance practice in relation to works by Gabrieli, investigates printed music editions that originated from the Church of St Anna, Augsburg, and evaluates materials in collections, inlcuding ones in Berlin, Hamburg, Kraków, London, Regensburg and Warsaw.