The Valois dukes of Burgundy established a rich system of patronage that extended continuously from the end of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the modern era. Their wide-ranging cultural influence makes the primacy of the court's musical life of great interest to the history of music. Ruling over most of the territories where the Franco-Flemish singers and composers who dominated European art music from 1400 to 1550 were born and trained, the dukes of Burgundy supported the most distinguished musicians of their time. The organization of musicians employed at the Burgundian court remained remarkably consistent from the 1380s and the 1500s. Music historians must connect dense archival materials about performers with musical sources that reveal little about the creation or development of the repertories they transmit. Born out of the French crown at the end of the fourteenth century, the court of Burgundy and its historical continuity left a substantial mark on the following century.

The nobility of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages needs and deserves to be studied from a standpoint that is not merely socio-economic, but political and cultural, too. Europe is deemed synonymous with Latin Christendom. The Castilian nobility was distinctly divided into three categories: the titulos, the caballeros and later the hidalgos and the escuderos. Nobles from different parts of western Christendom could also meet at the court. The Prussian Reise, that cross-roads of western nobility, was more characteristic of the fourteenth than of the fifteenth century. Texts, in some cases translations, spread far from their place of origin identical concepts of nobility and chivalry, and stimulated commentaries upon them. The existence of noble classes of varying importance within different European societies is explained, first and foremost, by the long-term history of these societies, and, vitally, by its outcome.