Any scholar involved in the study of sixteenth-century music printed in Venice is bound to be familiar with the phrase ‘con gratia et privilegio’; yet within the framework of music-printing as a whole, the uses and significance of the printing privilege have remained somewhat obscure. The Venetian prints on which the privilege indication appears now lie scattered across the globe, but Venice continues to guard part of her brilliant past – the archives of the Serenissima Repubblica still yield documents which clarify our understanding of the production and protection of prints during the Cinquecento.

A mysterious note vaguely resembling the apostropha of St Gall is often found in Beneventan manuscripts dating from the first half of the eleventh century. The note is named acuasta in one of the lists of Beneventan neumes. It is found less often in later manuscripts from southern Italy. Its appearance but not its meaning is briefly described under the title ‘strophicus” in volume 15 of Paléeographie Musicale. I have noted hundreds of instances of its use in Beneventan manuscripts from all periods except the last. It is easily mistaken for a sign for liquescence. Sometimes it is indeed thus used in the late gradual Benevento, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS VI. 35; but earlier it is so often employed for open syllables and simple vowels not subject to liquescence that a liquescent interpretation, even as a partial explanation for its early use, must be given up.

Another fragment can now be added to the list of manuscripts of fourteenth-century secular Italian polyphony. The new source (henceforth called Fn F.5.5) comprises two leaves, and at present serves as guard-sheets at the front and back of an incunabulum in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, with the call-number Incunab. F.5.5. This fifteenth-century book is a copy of the monumental historical accounts by Flavius Josephus of early Jewish history – a compendium that includes the De bello judaico, De antiquitate judaica contra Apionem and Antiquitates judaicae – translated from Greek into Latin by Ruffino d'Aquileia (Rufinus Aquileiensis) and published in Venice by Rinaldo da Nimega in 1981.

The French orientation of Florentine music in the second half of the Trecento, particularly with regard to the practice and theory of notation, has been recognised by music historians since the surveys of medieval sources and style made by Johannes Wolf and Friedrich Ludwig at the beginning of this century. The evidence for the ‘contenance française’ that has been most frequently cited includes texting procedures in three-voice compositions, structural features (such as the appearance of verto and chiuso endings in the polyphonic ballata), textual gallicisms and the presence of French compositions in Florentine musical manuscripts. The network of transmission which accounts for the appearance of these features in Italian music and musical sources has remained a matter for speculation. The fusion of French and Florentine traits of style in the last quarter of the fourteenth century has traditionally been viewed, at least in part, as a result of presumed personal contacts between French and Italian composers. The changing face of musical style does not, however, reflect a totally independent musical process; style is a function of the tastes and demands of an audience, as well as of the artistic personalities of specific composers. Florentine receptivity to French stylistic influences was determined by a number of factors, not the least important of which was the nature of the audience for music.

Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli are regarded as the great luminaries of the Venetian school of the second half of the sixteenth century. Although both uncle and nephew were employed at St Mark's as organists, rather than in the nominally more prestigious capacity of maestro di cappella, they contributed powerfully to the development of Venetian music, both sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental. In addition, their profound influence on later Venetian and German composers has long been acknowledged.

Recent years have witnessed a steady flow of newly discovered sources of late-medieval English sacred music. These have served both to document familiar repertories and practices more fully, and also to establish the identity and character of those that are more peripheral and idiosyncratic. Five of these new sources are described here. Four contribute to the hitherto relatively poorly represented indigenous sources and repertories of Mass music of the middle and the second half of the fifteenth century; one, Lincoln Cathedral MS 52, supplements the known body of fourteenth-century polytextual music.