This book is a companion volume to Music and Patronage in
Sixteenth-Century Mantua I. The relationship between the volumes is not
direct in the sense that specific references are made in volume I to
specific features of the works in volume II. Rather, the present volume
stands on its own as an anthology of compositions which could all be
described as products of the system of patronage discussed in volume I.
In various ways these ceremonial and domestic compositions illuminate
the environment that brought them into being and that enabled them to
survive. At the same time, the selection illustrates the variety of
styles employed by composers in the Gonzaga service from Jacques of
Mantua to Claudio Monteverdi. The collection includes works both by
little-known Mantuan musicians and by some of the most important
composers of the sixteenth century.