One difficulty in understanding the poetic texts of Trecento madrigals is that the language they use is often that of allegories and symbols, which requires a key for deciphering their true meaning. It is widely accepted, based on the interpretation of birds as heraldic symbols, that the madrigal Aquil'altera (Proud eagle) by Jacopo da Bologna was written either for a wedding or for a coronation ceremony. In this essay, however, I show that Aquila's content and literary style echo ideas and images that were circulating in the literature of the time, and especially in bestiaries and bestiary-inspired Italian poetry. Since these sources were well known to every educated person of the time, we may assume that its symbolic content, which is actually a praise of the human intellect, would have been understood by listeners and readers. This madrigal in turn provides a stimulus for tracing its ideas in other musical compositions of the Trecento, the madrigals Musica son by Francesco Landini and Se premio di virtù by Bartolino da Padova. These compositions are examined in the context of a specific cultural phenomenon in Italy of this period, namely, tenzoni, or correspondence in poetic forms – a practice that was the natural domain of the phenomenon we know as intertextuality.

Musical commodities frequently accompanied European explorers, soldiers, merchants and missionaries who travelled to Asia in the early modern period. During this time, numerous theoretical treatises and musical scores – both printed and manuscript – were disseminated throughout Asia. This article examines the dissemination and use of European musical works in early modern China, Japan and the Philippines, before identifying the titles of scores and treatises so far known to have been present in these territories. In order to measure the relative success of European missionaries in transplanting music to early modern Asia, it then takes as case studies the local production of three significant sources of European music during the seventeenth century: (1) the earliest example of printed European music from Asia, produced by the Jesuit press at Nagasaki in 1605; (2) a Chinese treatise on European music that was commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in 1713 and printed the following decade; and (3) a 116-page manuscript treatise, compiled by an unidentified Jesuit in late seventeenth-century Manila, which synthesises the most current European music theory as well as commenting on local musical practices.

Although medieval plainsong is known as a primarily diatonic repertory, the presence of a ‘non-diatonic’ tradition was brought to light long ago in the work of Jacobsthal, Delalande and others. This essay considers some aspects of this practice that have not been fully examined in previous studies and explores their relationship to early medieval theory and pedagogy. In the solo verses of the offertory chants, large sections are displaced from the diatonic background scale, sometimes permanently. The conception of irregular semitones presented in Scolica enchiriadis yields insight into this extensive ‘non-diatonic’ practice and has implications for interpreting variant readings of these problem spots. The final section of the essay explores some aspects of the Enchiriadis reception that point to changes in tone-system and pitch conception, shedding light on the contexts surrounding the suppression of irregular semitones.

This article examines the Ferrarese cultural context surrounding the virtually unprecedented choice of a text from Dante's Commedia for setting in Luzzaschi's Second Book of Madrigals of 1576. A particular focus is the quarrel in literary criticism of the early years of the 1570s over the place of Dante in the Italian literary firmament, and the position of the influential Modenese critic and philologist Lodovico Castelvetro in this quarrel. I speculate that Castelvetro, a subject of the duke of Ferrara, may have had a role in the choice of text. I also speculate that the disastrous Ferrarese earthquakes of the early years of the decade may have resounded for Ferrarese culture in the particular lines from the Commedia. Finally, I propose that the musical style chosen by Luzzaschi for this setting was an extraordinary and retrospective homage to the late style of his teacher Cipriano de Rore, another artistic figure intimately connected with the Este court. Both Rore and Castelvetro may be seen as icons of Ferrarese cultural prestige in the ongoing battle for precedence between the Este and the Medici.

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is the foundation upon which German composers of the seventeenth century experimented with longer musical forms. Composers interpolate new poetic material to a higher degree than with any other scriptural story, apart from the Passion. Additions to the story range from simple funeral songs for Lazarus to elaborate contrapuntal drinking songs for the Rich Man and his five brothers. We would expect the meaning imposed on the story in musical settings to be in line with local theology and exegesis. However, a close look at musical settings reveals how much they diverge from common theological explications. Onto the story of poverty, wealth, mercy and the fate of the soul are welded other topoi of Lutheran theology, including vanitas, penitence and the art of dying (Sterbekunst or ars moriendi), which effectively reinterpret the story in a direction not typically undertaken by writers of sermons and devotional volumes.

The tiered structure of Machaut's motets is often taken for granted: the tenor is the lowest voice, the motetus is in the middle, and the triplum is highest. While this is mostly true of Machaut's work and of Ars nova motets more generally, there are a number of significant exceptions – passages in which the upper voices switch roles and the motetus sings at the top of the texture. The most striking of these are consistently linked with the goddess Fortuna. In Motets 12, 14 and 15, moments of voice-crossing serve to illustrate the actions of the goddess, who traditionally raises the low and lowers the high. While they are certainly symbolic, these instances of voice-crossing are also audible: since the voices retain their distinct rhythmic and textual profiles even while their relative ranges are reversed, voice-crossings allow the listener to hear a musical world turned on its head.