The juxtaposition of, on the one hand, the popularity of Franco-Flemish polyphony and, on the other, the beginning of the Protestant Reformation made for interesting times. During the 1520s and 1530s, a period in which some parts of Protestant Europe made the decision to eschew all Latin polyphony, the motet was nevertheless already emerging as the dominant sacred musical genre. Despite – or possibly partially because of – these religious changes, printers throughout Europe, in Catholic as well as Protestant regions, embraced the motet by engaging themselves in the publication of both single-composer collections as well as mixed anthologies. This was partly enabled by the motet's importance in liturgical camps on both sides of the Lutheran-Catholic divide, maintaining its place in the worship of the Catholic Church while also growing to become an important feature of the new and emerging Lutheran forms of devotion. At the same time, the motet also grew in secular and non-liturgical ceremonial importance, especially as Europe's monarchs found ways to allude to their own greatness through the musical interpretation of biblical passages.

The Scotto and Gardano presses between them published dozens of Latin motet compilations during the first half of the sixteenth century. Pierre Attaingnant was responsible for around 20; the Petreius press and the Montanus and Neuber press published a handful – fewer than ten each. By contrast, Peter Schöffer the Younger published just one. The Cantiones quinque vocum selectissima were, in more ways than one, the culmination of Schöffer's music-printing career, and the anthology therefore holds a precious and important place among the output of one of the most respected printers of the sixteenth century.

As this book has explored, there are so many elements to the Cantiones anthology that make it an intriguing publication. First of all, it stands out by being different from Schöffer's other musical works: the music itself was acquired not from Lutheran Germany, as a significant part of his other output had been, but from Catholic Milan – a fact confirmed by Schöffer himself. Through the 1530s, Schöffer went to great efforts to make a name for himself in the music-printing domain. He had collaborated for several years with Mathias Apiarius, with whom he most notably printed the music of the Lutheran composers Sixt Dietrich and Johann Walter.