Music in Renaissance Lyons

"This book provides the first comprehensive study of musical life in Lyons at a time when the city was a leading European commercial and cultural centre. It surveys the vast repertoire of music copied and published in the city, relating it to social, political, economic, intellectual, and religious life. The great wealth of the city's literature is investigated for references which provide testimony to the musical attitudes and activities of resident or visiting patrons and amateurs. The surviving archives are similarly probed for evidence of the role of music and musicians in the public and private lives of the citizens, great and small."--BOOK JACKET. "The commissions, notarized agreements, and taxation records of the city's numerous professional instrumentalists and instrument-makers reveal an aspect quite different to that provided by the myriad publications emanating from the musical presses. Moderne, Beringen, Granjon, Gorlier, and other printers satisfied an international amateur demand through the city's famous free market. Information on the composers who lived or worked in Lyons is gleaned from contemporary records, dedications, and correspondence as well as from their musical output. The masses, motets, chansons, madrigals, psalms, and instrumental music for church, state, and citizen are reviewed, reflecting changes in form and style that occur in response to the requirements of visiting courts of an increasingly demanding bourgeoisie, led by affluent Italian patricians and eventually a more intrusive Protestant community."--BOOK JACKET.