The development of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sacred polyphony is linked closely not only to the Mass and divine services of the Roman Catholic Church, but equally to the rise of lay devotional congregations who sponsored their own services, often musically elaborate, at private chapels and altars. Within this popular phenomenon of lay devotion in the Low Countries, several northern confraternities can be cited for their very early regular use of polyphony. A polyphonic Salve service was established in 1362 by the Marian confraternity at St Goedele in Brussels, and Reinhard Strohm has shown that, by 1396, the Marian Guild of the Dry Tree (Ghilde vanden droghen Boome) in Bruges sponsored weekly masses sung in polyphony by its guild members. That polyphony was central to some fourteenth-century confraternity services is confirmed by the records of the Illustrious Confraternity of Our Lady in 's-Hertogenbosch, founded in 1318 in St John's Church.

How did Latin neumes begin? And what developments lie between those beginnings and the first plentiful documents of neuming which date from about 900? A long line of speculations has failed to produce generally credited answers to these questions. Figure 1 shows a stemma by Joseph Froger that can serve as orientation to the problem. This does not address ultimate origins. Its ‘original’ is the archetypal neumation of the Frankish–‘Gregorian’ mass propers, a lost formation compiled some time after neumatic beginnings. It goes on to the regional neume-species of 900, all ostensible outgrowths of that archetype: Ept – German; Cla – north Italian; Clu – Cluny; Dij – Burgundian; Den – St Denis; Lan – Lorraine or ‘Metz’; Mur 3 – St Gall or ‘Alammanian’; Cha – Breton; Alb – Aquitanian; Ben – south Italian/Beneventan. Between the unknown ‘original’ and the multiple neume-species around 900 an obscure evolution takes place. There is, in Froger's words, ‘une sorte de nuée opaque… [une] zone brumeuse’.

The conventional view on the origin of the gradual was stated succinctly by Peter Wagner: ‘The Responsorial solo in the mass is of apostolic origin…in imitation of the Jewish liturgy a solo from the psalmist was inserted between the readings.’ The precise form this view has taken more recently in the works of both musical and liturgical historians can be summarised as follows. The early Mass or Eucharist consisted of two major parts. The essential part, the Eucharist proper, had its origins in the Last Supper, a Jewish ceremonial meal, possibly the Passover Seder. This was preceded by a ‘service of the Word’, made up of four elements: scripture reading, discourse on the reading, congregational prayer and psalms sung in response to the readings. This pre-eucharistic service was plainly and simply an adoption en bloc of the ancient synagogue service.

Despite the diligent efforts of archivists, there are a number of fifteenth-century composers for whom are lacking most or all of their biographical details. Not all of these are minor figures. Caron, Hayne van Ghizeghem and Loyset Compère were all active composers who achieved a large degree of contemporary esteem, evidenced not only by the number of concordances but even by direct references. Yet Caron has become so obscure that not even his forename is certain. Hayne van Ghizeghem disappears from Burgundian records while still a relatively young man. There are no records at all for Compère's early years, and his later career is plagued by gaps. At this point, it is not likely that much more documentation will be found to shed light on any of these individuals.

Modern scholarship about Renaissance instrumental music has suffered from a scarcity of musical sources. Consequently current research efforts often seem to operate in the manner of archaeological excavations; at times it is only as one layer is painstakingly uncovered that the configurations of another are revealed. This was certainly the experience of this contribution, which began as an investigation into late fifteenth-century Italian instrumental practices. The early phases of the Italian study involved sifting through many archival documents, and one initial miscellaneous impression was that German players frequently appeared in Italian ensembles. Pursuit of this almost casual observation led first to an awareness that German presence in Italy was substantial, then, further, to the fact that the oltramontani dominated aspects of instrumental music. This knowledge of the German contribution led, in turn, to a substantial reappraisal of the formative stages of ensemble performance practices.

As a person, Oswald von Wolkenstein (1375/8–1445) is a more tangible figure than almost any of his contemporaries. The numerous extant biographical documents enable us to trace his life in minute detail. His autobiographical songs reveal him as a widely travelled knight, a liegeman of his king, but also as a poet and singer performing his own works. His travels took him not only to distant countries but also to places of political importance within the empire – to the Council at Constance, the Reichstag at Nuremberg and Ulm, the royal court at Pressburg, the Council at Basle. Four portraits and a sculpture tell us what he looked like: robust in physique, and with his right eye missing. The numerous reports of quarrels with his neighbours, bishop and duke give the impression of an irascible, pugnacious character. Nonetheless he is one of the greatest Germanic poets of the late Middle Ages (possibly even the ‘most significant lyric poet writing in German between Walther von der Vogelweide and Goethe’, as Ulrich Miiller put it). He was, moreover, a poet with an exceptional flair for combining his words with music. And something else that makes him unique in the German-speaking world is the fact that his works have been handed down as a self-contained collection, in manuscripts devoted to him alone.

Lorenz Welker kindly allowed me to see the typescript of his paper just as I was embarking on an attempt to list the polyphonic song repertory of the years 1415–80. With the startling knowledge that some of Oswald's music originated as late as 1420, my ear was obviously alert for more such pieces. Sure enough two additional polyphonic songs by Oswald turned out to have music taken from the French repertory of the early fifteenth century. They are Sag an gesellschaft/Von rechter lieb kraft and Kom liebster man.