We know very little about the process of composition in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century Italy. Although the most popular pieces, be they madrigals, ballatas or caccias, are notated and their composers identified, how they came into existence is unclear. Specifically, we are not certain whether writing was necessary for their creation and transmission. Recent studies of compositional process show that much composition was done in the mind before being written down.

We are faced with an enormous gap between what musical sources record and what we know about the process of, and instruction in, composition. On the one hand, we have the compositions as they are transmitted in manuscripts, which show the finished product, with voices separately notated and dissonance carefully applied and controlled. On the other hand, we have only music theory treatises devoted to the art of counterpoint to tell us how composers achieved this control and what kind of music education they received; moreover, these treatises seem exceedingly rudimentary. We know that from the fourteenth century onwards theorists often distinguish between noteagainst- note and diminished counterpoint. However, while most of them acknowledge the existence of diminished counterpoint, they describe only note-against-note counterpoint.

Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century artists may provide us with vital insights into creative processes of this period. At the exhibition ‘Prague, the Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437’ at the Metropolitan Museum of New York (20 September 2005 to 3 January 2006), I was particularly struck by a so-called ‘model book’ from the Viennese Kunsthistorisches Museum, Sammlung fur Plastik und Kunstgewerbe (inv. 5003, 5004). The art historian Julius von Schlosser described this particular model book in a benchmark article of 1902, ‘Vademecum eines fahrenden Malergesellen’. (Was he alluding perhaps to Mahler’s song cycle?) He coined the term ‘Modellbuch’ (modern scholars use also the term ‘pattern book’) to describe it. The model book (c.1400) consists of fourteen tablets of maple wood held together by strips of parchment. Each tablet includes four drawings on pieces of paper (95 × 90 mm). There are forty drawings altogether of busts and one skull, and another thirteen of animal heads plus a spider (see Figure 2.1). The model book came with a leather case with hooks, which could easily be attached to a belt.