This book collects twelve of the papers given at a conference held at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., on 1-3 April 1993, in conjunction with the exhibition `Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture'. A group of distinguished scholars considered music in medieval and Renaissance Rome. The volume presents a series of wide-ranging and original treatments of music written for and performed in the papal court from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. New discoveries are offered which force a radical reevaluation of the Italian papal court as a musical centre during the Great Schism. A series of motets for various popes are subject to close analysis. New interpretations and information are offered concerning the repertory of the papal chapel in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the institutional life of the papal singers, and the individual biographies of singers and composers. Thought-provoking, even controversial, evaluations of the music of composers connected with, or thought to be connected with, Rome and the papal court, such as Ninot le Petit, Josquin, and Palestrina round out the volume.

The Josquin Companion presents the most complete discussion ever published in English on the music of the greatest composer of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521). A collaborative effort by numerous distinguished scholars, the volume also includes a sampler CD of Josquin's works specially recorded by The Clerks Group.

Donated in the late fifteenth century to the papal choir, the musical manuscript "Cappella Sistina""14 "reflects a new style of mass composition used by some of the era's most noted composers. "Masses for the Sistine Chapel" makes the complete contents of the "Cappella Sistina""14"--held in the Vatican Library--available for the first time.

Featuring fifteen masses and four mass fragments, this volume includes works by such composers as Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, and Antoine Busnoys. In a comprehensive introduction and critical commentary on each work, Richard Sherr places the choirbook in its historical context, describing its physical makeup as well as the repertory. Sherr's critical edition of this celebrated manuscript finally provides the insight necessary to inform future performances and recordings of its influential contents.