The peacefulness and longevity of the Venetian Republic prove that it had solved one of its greatest problems – that of poverty Not that it was rid of its poor even in times of prosperity: but at least they were cared for by a wealth of charitable organizations, and that desperation which leads to civil insurrection never gained a hold. The chronically sick, the girls having no dowry, the orphans and the beggars were each helped by various institutions which were supported by the more fortunate. The four largest of these could between them claim to cater for any poor person who was really in need. The beggars were taken off the streets by the Ospedale di S. Lazzaro et Mendicanti, founded and endowed by three noble families. The sick went to the Incurabili, originally a house for poor pilgrims, but later turned to this more pressing need. Orphans and poor children were housed in two ospedali: the Derelitti near the monastery of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and later known as the Ospedaletto; and the Pietà.

Galuppi made his fortune in the theatres. He made his living in the churches. From the age of 34 he was continually in the service of one or other of the ecclesiastical organizations of Venice. In 1740 he was director of music at the ospedale of the Mendicanti, which in effect was the post of composer-in-ordinary to its chapel. In 1748 he was appointed vice-maestro di cappella at S. Marco, holding the two posts simultaneously for some four years. He continued at S. Marco for the rest of his life, becoming its maestro in 1762; while he returned to the service of an ospedale in 1762, this time the Incurabili (where he was to serve in the years 1762-5 and 1768-76), again holding the jobs in plurality to the end of his life.

It was in the Shakespeare year of 1964 that I first realized to what extent my work on English stage music lacked foundation and depth without a better knowledge of the practices of dramatic music in Italy. Even at that early stage I recognized that the key plot for intermedi and the first operas was the story of Orpheus which looms so impressively, both in quantity and in quality, at the birth of opera. Indeed, it is a plot that continues to act as a springboard for the imagination of composers of operas and ballets, even after the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the works of Gluck, Offenbach and Stravinsky.

Thomas Tallis, in common with virtually every other Tudor composer, left no legacy of autograph copies of his music. A glance at the footnotes and critical commentaries that gloss his works in the various collected editions is enough to show how frequently the sources from which his music can be recovered are in disagreement with one another, often in detail, sometimes in greater substance. Looking at these sources and their readings, one is left with the impression that these are the testaments of lesser authorities: the musicians and scribes, of varying competence or trustworthiness, who copied Tallis's music into their manuscripts, not only during the composer's lifetime but also for many decades (or in certain cases centuries) after his death.

If Scipione Gonzaga is remembered at all today, it is most likely to be for his friendship and patronage of Torquato Tasso; as the dedicatee of the poet's youthful Discorsi dell'arte poetica and one of his dialogues, the transcriber (in the crucial year 1575) of all the stanzas of the Liberata then available to him, and the editor of the celebrated edition of the full text of the poem brought out by the Mantuan printer Osanna in 1584. Of his own literary efforts little remains. A handful of poems in a respectable if conventional Petrarchesque idiom appeared during his lifetime; on the other hand the Commentam, evidently inspired by classical precedent and a rare example from the period of a prelate's autobiography, was not published until the end of the eighteenth century when it appeared in an elaborate edition with annotations by Giuseppe Marotti.

Amarilli, mia bella is the best known of the solo madrigals that Giulio Caccini included in his Le nuove musiche of 1602.' The text was by Alessandro Guarini, who no doubt saw in his poem the brevità, acutezza, leggiadria, nobiltà and dolcezza that he claimed were most characteristic of modern madrigal verse. Similarly, the leggiadria and dolcezza of Caccini's setting have marked it out for prominence: Amarilh, mia bella was one of the first of his songs to be disseminated widely through Italy and Europe, and its distinction is reflected in its frequent appearance (often in less than satisfactory editions) in vocal anthologies up to the present day. But the song is far from being a straightforward example of Caccini's style. Indeed, a study of its sources in contemporary manuscripts and prints raises intriguing questions about the supposed innovations of Caccini's music and about the ways in which Florentine monody became known both south and north of the Alps.

It is perhaps still true that research into sacred types of music in early seventeenth-century Italy lags behind that into madrigal, monody and opera; it is certainly the case that the textual aspects of sacred music, themselves closely bound up with liturgical questions, have not so far received the kind of study that has been taken for granted with regard to the literary texts of opera and of secular vocal music. This is hardly to be wondered at: unlike great madrigal poetry or the work of the best librettists, sacred texts do not include much that can be valued as art in its own right. Nevertheless, if we are to understand better the context of the motet – as distinct from the musical setting of liturgical entities such as Mass, Vespers or Compline – we need a clearer view of the types of text that were set, the way in which composers exercised their choice, and the way such taste was itself changing in relation to the development of musical styles. For the motet was the one form of sacred music in which an Italian composer of the early decades of the seventeenth century could combine a certain freedom of textual choice with an adventurousness of musical idiom.

It is common practice in the Catholic Church for friends and relatives of the deceased to have religious services held for their souls. That is, a donation is offered to a priest, a church or a monastery so that one or more Masses may be said in their remembrance. This is certainly not a surprising tradition in a religion which believes in life after death, in the value of prayer, and in the possibility that the prayers of the living may lessen the punishment of the sins of the dead. As musicologists we are, of course, all aware that many Requiem Masses were written over the centuries for just this purpose, but recent research suggests that there were yet other important musical consequences of this particular religious belief and practice.

Rameau's late entry into the world of opera is one of the best-known features of his biography. When Hippolyte et Aricie, his first tragédie, burst upon an unsuspecting public at the Académie royale de musique in October 1733, the composer had just turned 50. Of his earlier music, only the second and third books of harpsichord pieces and the cantata Le Berger fidèle would have been at all well known. Yet by the end of the decade, with the appearance of two further tragédies, Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739), and two opéra-ballets, Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Fêtes d'Hébé (1739), the middle-aged newcomer had established himself as the foremost, if also the most controversial, French composer of his day.