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Near the end of the third decade of the sixteenth century, a five-volume set of madrigal and motet partbooks was assembled in Florence and sent as a gift—or "musical embassy"—to the English court of Henry VIII. The manuscript set—minus the missing altus part—has been owned since 1935 by the Newberry Library in Chicago; but until H. Colin Slim's exhaustive efforts, no thorough study of the history or contents of the partbooks had been undertaken.

At first encounter, these partbooks yield no clues concerning their provenance, their composers' names, or the reasons for their dispatch to England. In his search for this information, Professor Slim used the musicologists' customary tools, namely, biobibliography, concordances, and textual and musical analysis. But he also used bibliographers' tools not always employed by musicologists: watermarks, bindings, script, orthography, and illuminations.

As a result of his efforts, the author was able to identify nearly all the works' composers and the manuscripts' expert illuminator. He also presents a detailed description of the binding process and the probably background of the scribe, places the political and social references in the works, and determines the route the volumes may have taken after they left Henry's library.

By placing the date of the partbooks' arrival in England around 1528, Professor Slim suggests that the musical culture of the early Tudor court was less French than has hitherto been thought. Indeed, the presence of the partbooks in Henry's library makes them the earliest evidence of the Italian madrigal in England. The author also provides new and significant data on the artistic and historical position of Philippe Verdelot, the partbooks' most extensively represented composer.

Volume I of this set contains two parts. The first, dealing with the manuscript itself, contains the history of the partbooks, information on their origin, composers, texts, and their importance as a gift to Henry VIII. Part II, dealing with the music, discusses general musical traits, the motets, the madrigals, the results of collation, and the appearance of some of the Newberry motets and madrigals in other sources.

Near the end of the third decade of the sixteenth century, a five-volume set of madrigal and motet partbooks was assembled in Florence and sent as a gift—or "musical embassy"—to the English court of Henry VIII. The manuscript set—minus the missing altus part—has been owned since 1935 by the Newberry Library in Chicago; but until H. Colin Slim's exhaustive efforts, no thorough study of the history or contents of the partbooks had been undertaken.

At first encounter, these partbooks yield no clues concerning their provenance, their composers' names, or the reasons for their dispatch to England. In his search for this information, Professor Slim used the musicologists' customary tools, namely, biobibliography, concordances, and textual and musical analysis. But he also used bibliographers' tools not always employed by musicologists: watermarks, bindings, script, orthography, and illuminations.

As a result of his efforts, the author was able to identify nearly all the works' composers and the manuscripts' expert illuminator. He also presents a detailed description of the binding process and the probably background of the scribe, places the political and social references in the works, and determines the route the volumes may have taken after they left Henry's library.

By placing the date of the partbooks' arrival in England around 1528, Professor Slim suggests that the musical culture of the early Tudor court was less French than has hitherto been thought. Indeed, the presence of the partbooks in Henry's library makes them the earliest evidence of the Italian madrigal in England. The author also provides new and significant data on the artistic and historical position of Philippe Verdelot, the partbooks' most extensively represented composer.
In Volume II, Professor Slim has transcribed the music of the thirty motets and thirty madrigals for modern performance. The parts are cantus, tenor, bassus, and quintus et VI; the altus partbook is missing. Concordant sources provide the altus parts for all but four of the motets and six of the madrigals. These ten have been composed by Professor Slim. Notes at the end of each selection provide variant readings for both music and text. The Latin texts of the motets, the Italian of the madrigals, and an English translation of each appear at the end of the volume.

Venetian publisher Ottaviano Petrucci was the first to print music for many voices with movable type. This Petrucci collection of motets from 1503, known as Motetti B, includes music from an impressive array of composers, many among the best known of their day. Motetti B is also the only source for many of its compositions, including several by Josquin des Prez.

As its lengthy title suggests, Motetti B consists of a wide range of devotional motets on the Passion, the Veneration of the Cross, the Eucharist, and the Virgin Mary. Many display a new style with a more harmonic orientation and also have close connections to lauda, devotional songs in Latin and Italian. Indeed, as Warren Drake points out, the subject matter of these motets displays close ties with the widespread devotional trends of the late fifteenth century, and Motetti B might even be considered a musical book of hours. In addition to a general introduction and the motets themselves, this edition includes detailed concordances and critical commentary on the sources and problematic aspects of the works.

Often called the musical equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Trent codices have dramatically broadened our understanding of Renaissance music. Much has been written about this collection of fifteenth-century music manuscripts, most of which were discovered in the Cathedral at Trent, but none of the seven codices--generally called Trent 87 through Trent 93--has ever been published in its entirety. Thus Rebecca Gerber’s edition of Trent 88, which took more than a decade to prepare, will be the first to appear. As such, this volume is a landmark in the publication of early music. 

Trent 88 comprises an extensive anthology of 145 compositions tailored to the ceremonial and daily religious services of the period. The international scope of the collection is both impressive and significant: early English, French, German, and Spanish mass cycles appear alongside simple hymns and Magnificats. Music by renowned composers—including Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, Johannes Cornago, and John Bedingham—is joined here by an even larger repertory of anonymous compositions with great aesthetic and historical value. Edited to accommodate both scholars and performers, and augmented with Gerber’s expert introduction, this volume will significantly deepen existing knowledge of a crucial period in the history of music.

This volume is the latest in a distinguished series of Renaissance editions, Monuments of Renaissance Music, which was founded by Edward E. Lowinsky and is now edited by Howard Mayer Brown. Four of the seven volumes published in the series to date have received the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society.

Andrea Antico was one of the earliest and most important music publishers. Starting in Rome in 1510 and continuing in Venice, Antico produced elegant books of polyphonic music, cut with incredible skill on wood blocks. The repertory he published is central to understanding sixteenth-century music. It includes, for example, many pieces sung regularly in the Sistine Chapel. Since the best-represented composer in Antico's volumes if Jean Mouton, chapel master to the French king, these motet books provide insights into the character of music both at the Vatican and at the French court at the height of the Renaissance.

Martin Picker provides an exemplary edition of the four volumes of motets published by Antico in the early 1520s. His edition includes, in modern notation, all of the contents of these volumes not previously published in the Medici Codex (Monuments of Renaissance Music, Volumes III-V). Picker prefaces his edition with a history of Antico's publishing career and a discussion of each piece and its sources. The list of concordant sources and the discussions of important variants will be of enormous value to Renaissance scholars.