Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese composer and theorist Vicente Lusitano wrote a manuscript treatise on improvised counterpoint which constitutes the most thorough and detailed explanation that has survived on the subject. This manuscript has long been overlooked by music historians, despite being easily accessible at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris). The manuscript is described and its history traced. Lusitano's rules, techniques and stylistic advice are investigated and compared with contemporary theory. The extraordinary complexity of the contrapuntal lines singers were expected to invent extempore calls for a reappraisal of the relationship between improvisation and composition, also discussed by Lusitano. Historical evidence is adduced to provide a context for this document; far from being disconnected from the real life of sixteenth-century music, Lusitano's manuscript counterpoint treatise provides a key to understanding the oral tradition of Renaissance art music.

It is well known that the shift from canti carnascialeschi to mascherate, which took place in Florence during the first half of the sixteenth century, corresponds to parallel political changes from republic to duchy. The role of the new Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in the transformation of Florentine street festivals must be appraised through his aim of establishing a courtly society in which the nobility were subjected to his control. In this article, this double process of change is observed through documents which show how the courtly mascherata can be viewed as a means by which courtiers sought to be identified as a homogeneous group by all Florentine citizens, looking at and listening to them from their windows.

The musical life of Florence in the sixteenth century was no rival to that of Rome or Venice, but the city could legitimately claim to be the birthplace of the madrigal. In troubled times, scarred by a succession of contrasting political regimes and against a backdrop of civil war, foreign composers like Arcadelt and Verdelot, as well as native Florentines like Pisano, Corteccia, Layolle and Rampollini, contributed significantly to the creation of this most representative musical genre of the Italian Renaissance. Of the many factors contributing to the appearance of the madrigal, one of the most important was patronage: several studies have shown how members of the great Florentine families encouraged the dawning of the genre by commissioning new works from composers or by ordering manuscript copies of anthologies, which today give us a precise idea of the repertory that was sung in the 1520s and 1530s.