Instrumental music in the urban centres of Renaissance Germany

Abstract

Modern scholarship about Renaissance instrumental music has suffered from a scarcity of musical sources. Consequently current research efforts often seem to operate in the manner of archaeological excavations; at times it is only as one layer is painstakingly uncovered that the configurations of another are revealed. This was certainly the experience of this contribution, which began as an investigation into late fifteenth-century Italian instrumental practices. The early phases of the Italian study involved sifting through many archival documents, and one initial miscellaneous impression was that German players frequently appeared in Italian ensembles. Pursuit of this almost casual observation led first to an awareness that German presence in Italy was substantial, then, further, to the fact that the oltramontani dominated aspects of instrumental music. This knowledge of the German contribution led, in turn, to a substantial reappraisal of the formative stages of ensemble performance practices.