Music of the Renaissance abounds in instances of successive and simultaneous use of perfect and imperfect time. When they occur simultaneously, the intended relationship can usually be determined without much difficulty. It cannot be assumed, however, that horizontal relationships of mensurations were always identical with the vertical ones. On the contrary, we know, for example, that many theorists advocated that major prolation signify augmentation only when it occurred simultaneously with minor prolation in another part, and not when minor and major prolations followed one another in the same part. Similarly, the sign of diminished perfect time always indicated diminution by half when it occurred simultaneously with undiminished perfect time; otherwise it might also indicate diminution by a third. Consequently, when imperfect time is followed by or follows perfect time, the question arises which value should remain equal under both tempora: breve, semibreve or minim? It is striking that not a single modern scholar considers the possibility of semibreve equivalence. It will be readily seen that semibreve equivalence is an independent possibility only when combined with different prolations (see Example lc–d); when prolations are the same, it is indistinguishable from minim equivalence (see Example la–b). Anticipating the results of the investigation that follows, I should say at once that I have not found a single theorist who would advocate semibreve equivalence in . The fact that modern scholars do not consider semibreve equivalence either means, presumably, that notational practice of the Renaissance does not suggest it.

The Rule of St Benedict (c. 520) mentions a cantor only once. The celebrated twelfth-century Liber ordinis, a book of monastic regulations compiled at the Abbey of St Victor in Paris, requires several folios to outline all the duties of the cantor's office. During the six centuries separating these two sources, the monastic cantor had become one of the most important persons in the religious community: he supervised all aspects of music-making, he was in charge of the library and the scriptorium, and he oversaw and directed the celebration of the liturgy. Yet even though the cantor had a crucial role in the performance and transmission of medieval liturgical music, very little scholarly attention has been given to his office. This study offers some theories concerning the evolution of the cantor's office, and a description of that office during the late eleventh century, the period in which it reached its zenith. Many issues will be raised that, it is hoped, will suggest directions for further research.

The term ‘Old Beneventan’ describes the archaic non-Gregorian chant found chiefly in two eleventh-century Graduals in the chapter library at Benevento. This is perhaps in part a translation of Dom Hesbert's ‘Ancien rit bénéventain’, with a hint of analogy to the ‘Old Roman’ chant. The term means that this chant is ‘Old’, that is, that it pre-dates the introduction of Gregorian chant into southern Italy; and that it is ‘Beneventan’. But both words need to be evaluated carefully.

In 1971, at the International Josquin Festival-Conference, I mentioned for the first time a group of newly discovered documents on the early career of Adrian Willaert in Italy, drawn mainly from the account books of his patron, Cardinal Ippolito i d'Este (1479–1520). In several articles since then I have briefly described these findings but until now have not been able to furnish the full particulars on which they depend. This article aims to do just that, and adds enough by way of commentary to provide a new portrait of the young Willaert's connections with Ferrarese patrons in these years. This new portrait not only transforms our view of his early maturity and its context, but extends his first known Italian period back some seven years before 1522, heretofore the first secure date for his presence in Italy altogether.

The Order of the Golden Fleece, a chivalric order that flourished in Burgundy and the Low Countries from 1431 to 1559, has attracted the attention of historians of politics, culture and art since the nineteenth century, but it has been little explored by music historians, who have contented themselves with a mention of the order's existence and with descriptions of one of its more famous, but less characteristic, events: the Feast of the Oath of the Pheasant. Nevertheless, the order had a strong influence on sacred music during the period of its greatest activity, requiring polyphonic music for many of its functions and perhaps commissioning works by such composers as Josquin Desprez and Alexander Agricola. This influence is intimately tied to the structure of the Order of the Golden Fleece and to the desire of the successive sovereigns for ostentatious display when the group met.

In the early spring of 1608 a calamity befell the Gonzaga court at Mantua with the sudden death of their young virtuoso singer, Caterina Martinelli. And the shock felt at her untimely demise was made all the worse by the realisation that the court's prestige and the standing of Duke Vincenzo himself were thereby threatened. More precisely, what was at risk were the elaborate plans that the Mantuans had made – plans in which Caterina Martinelli had figured very prominently – for an extraordinary series of musical-theatrical events to be held later in that spring to which the whole world (or at least all of it that mattered) had been invited.

During the Middle Ages, the construction or renovation of a great church was a vast undertaking in terms of time and of money. An array of cathedrals that still rise above the cities and towns of northern France bears witness to medieval ingenuity and industry. The first structure which embodies many of the elements that are now called Gothic was begun at St-Denis in 1140. The church as we know it, however, was not entirely the work of the twelfth century. Only much later, between 1231 and 1281, was St-Denis finally completed. Substantial evidence of the thirteenth-century rebuilding is found in the monument which stands just to the north of Paris. But the stones of St-Denis do not tell the entire story: a small handful of documents refer to stages of the fifty-year reconstruction of the abbey, and now, new witness exists in the form of the liturgical manuscripts which have survived from the thirteenth century.

During the course of his thirty-year career in Italy between the early 1470s and the first years of the sixteenth century, Tinctoris witnessed the printing of only two of his own theoretical works. His glossary of musical terms, the Terminorum musicae diffinitorium, has been convincingly shown to have issued from the Treviso press of the author's compatriot and contemporary Gerardus de Lisa, around 1495, although the work had clearly been compiled in manuscript form some twenty years previously. The Diffinitorium has, indeed, fared relatively well at the hands of modern scholarship, though one suspects that its generic significance as an early musical dictionary has occasionally clouded critical judgement on its actual content, and there still remain unanswered basic questions as to why, and for whom, the book was printed at all. By contrast, the other, fragmentary treatise of Tinctoris to be printed in his lifetime, De inuentione et usu musice – a work frankly more interesting by far than the Diffinitorium – has received surprisingly scant attention, and a reassessment of the place, date and circumstances of its publication is long overdue. In addition, it seems appropriate to take the opportunity of presenting here some new fragments of the treatise which have recently come to light in north-east France.