This collection of essays is unified by a number of concerns: one is the way in which musical activity of all kinds was instrumentalized by those in power, in Italy, during the Sixteenth Century. A second expressed through the chornological concentration on the second half of the century, is with a period which is still often regarded as one of decline and degeneracy after the achievements of the Quattrocento and the decades before the calam�t� d'Italia. This book implicitly argues that Italian culture did not lose its vigor after 1530, but underwent a transformation, as both individuals and institutions reacted to new economic, political, and religious circumstances.