Jams 2007 60 1 1

Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts
Author(s): DAVITT MORONEY

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 1-
70
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Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty
and Sixty Parts
DAVITT MORONEY
In memory of Philip Brett
S
pem in alium, the “songe of fortie partes” by Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–
1585), has long been admired as one of the outstanding musical works
of the sixteenth century. Copied during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, it was published several times in the nineteenth and
twentieth.1 Today, it is one of the most performed and most recorded works
of its age. For many years, descriptions of it as being “unique” clouded
research into its stylistic and historical context. In 1980, Paul Doe could still
comment, mistakenly (in The New Grove Dictionary), that it is “such an aston-
ishing technical achievement, and so completely without precedent anywhere
in Europe, that to call it ‘experimental’ seems an absurd understatement.”2
Early versions of this article were presented at the Med-Ren Conference in Tours on 16 July 2005,
at the University of California, Berkeley, on 4 November 2005, and at the Seventy-second Annual
Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Los Angeles, November 2006. Research under-
taken during its preparation was supported by a grant from the Humanities Research Fund of the
University of California, Berkeley. I am grateful to Clifford Bartlett, David S. Butchart, Iain
Fenlon, Karen Flint, Joseph Kerman, Patrick Macey, Catherine Massip, Kerry McCarthy, John
Milsom, Robert Munsell, Anthony Newcomb, Kate van Orden, and James Whitta for help and
advice of various kinds, and to the JAMS readers for their constructive comments.
1. See Philip Brett, preface to Thomas Tallis, Spem in alium nunquam habui: Motet in Forty
Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); this edition is revised from the plates of the publi-
cation in Tudor Church Music 6 (London: Oxford University Press for the Carnegie United
Kingdom Trust, 1928). For detailed information on the surviving sources, see Bertram Schofield,
“The Manuscripts of Tallis’s Forty-Part Motet,” Musical Quarterly 37 (1951): 176–83; and
Suzanne Cole, “ ‘Often Seene, but Seldome Sung’: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Manu-
scripts of Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium,” in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 2, ed.
Jeremy Dibble and Bennett Zon, 154–68 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999). Spem was first pub-
lished in Motet for 40 Voices, ed. A. H. Mann (London: Weekes, 1888). The first recording was
made in 1948 by the Morley College Choir (HMV DA 1921–22, two 10-inch double-sided elec-
trical 78 rpm discs); see Timothy Day, “Tallis in Performance,” Early Music 33 (2005): 683–92.
2. Paul Doe, “Tallis, Thomas,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980),
18:544.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60, Number 1, pp. 1–70, ISSN 0003-0139, electronic ISSN 1547-
3848. © 2007 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to
photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website,
www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jams.2007.60.1.1.
2 Journal of the American Musicological Society
In the 1980s several publications by Iain Fenlon, Hugh Keyte, and David S.
Butchart provided support for Doe’s view that Tallis’s great “songe” was
one of his later compositions, suggesting a link with the visit to Queen
Elizabeth I’s court in June 1567 of the most distinguished composer of the
Medici court in Florence, Alessandro Striggio the elder (ca. 1537–1592).3
England was Striggio’s farthest destination on a long European trip and he
undertook this part of his journey specifically to meet English “virtuosos in
the profession of music.” Since a forty-part work by Striggio was known, the
motet Ecce beatam lucem (surviving in Zwickau), it was easy for Fenlon and
Keyte to suggest a possible “Striggio-Tallis link.”4 Furthermore, by proposing
a new date for Ecce beatam lucem that was prior to the 1567 visit (rather than
the more traditional assumption that the motet may have been composed in
1568), they also cautiously implied that the “link” may have worked in the
direction of Striggio’s motet having influenced Tallis.
However, as Butchart noted in 1982, surviving documents confirm that a
different and more extensive composition played a significant part in Striggio’s
1567 journey: a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass in forty parts. One sur-
viving report mentions that the Agnus Dei was in sixty parts. This Mass was
taken to Vienna to be presented to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II
(although it was actually given to him in Brno) in January 1567,5 and was then
performed at the Wittelsbach court in Munich and the Valois court in France,
just before Striggio’s arrival in England. Butchart remarked that the link
between Ecce beatam lucem and Spem was “tantalizingly imprecise” and that
3. Iain Fenlon and Hugh Keyte, “Memorialls of Great Skill: A Tale of Five Cities,” Early
Music 8 (1980): 329–34; Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Mantua, 2 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1:87; Andrew Parrott, “A Tale of Five Cities
Revisited,” Early Music 9 (1981): 342–43 (and Hugh Keyte’s reply: 343–45); David S. Butchart,
“A Musical Journey of 1567: Alessandro Striggio in Vienna, Munich, Paris and London,” Music
and Letters 63 (1982): 1–16. The account of Striggio’s life in Ray J. Tadlock, “Alessandro
Striggio, Madrigalist,” this Journal 11 (1958): 29–40, is now insufficient. See Warren Kirken-
dale, “Alessandro Striggio und die Medici: Neue Briefe und Dokumente,” in Festschrift Othmar
Wesely zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Manfred Angerer et al., 325–53 (Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1982).
Further new information is also contained in the introductions to Alessandro Striggio, Il primo li-
bro de madrigali a sei voci, ed. David S. Butchart (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1986) and
Alessandro Striggio, Il primo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, ed. David S. Butchart (Middleton,
WI: A-R Editions, 2006). On Striggio’s position at the Florentine court, see Warren Kirkendale,
The Court Musicians in Florence during the Principate of the Medici (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 68.
Alfred Einstein gives an overview of his secular works in The Italian Madrigal (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1949), 2:761–68.
4. Fenlon and Keyte, “Memorialls,” 334n14. Ecce beatam lucem survives in Zwickau,
Ratsschulbibliothek Mus. 109.1 (a complete set of parts, one of which is dated 1587). See
Alessandro Striggio, Ecce beatam lucem, for 40 Voices, ed. Hugh Keyte (London: Mapa Mundi,
1980). A discussion of the work, including a comparison with Spem in alium (not to Striggio’s
benefit), is found in Philip Brett, “Facing the Music,” Early Music 10 (1982): 347–50; repr. as
chap. 3 of Philip Brett, William Byrd and His Contemporaries: Essays and a Monograph, ed. Joseph
Kerman and Davitt Moroney, 22–30 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of
California Press, 2006).
5. Maximilian II (1527–1576), Holy Roman Emperor from 1564.
Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts 3
it was more likely that “the example of such compositional virtuosity that
Striggio could have shown his English colleagues was the Mass for 40 voices
rather than the motet, since this was his main musical offering at the other
centres he visited in 1567.”6 He later noted with regret that “no trace remains
. . . of the 40-part mass (with its reported 60-part Agnus),” a view repeated by
other scholars.7
A complete set of parts for Striggio’s monumental Mass does in fact survive
in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), comprising forty-two part-
books (one for each voice and two for the accompanimental bass, or Bassus ad
organum). The full title of the Mass is found only in partbook 42: Missa sopra
Ecco si beato gior[no]. in cinque Corri divisa di Allessandro (“Mass on Ecco sì
beato giorno, divided into five choirs, by Alessandro”), but the composer’s
name appears in fuller form in partbook 41. The source almost certainly
derives indirectly from the French leg of Striggio’s journey, although the copy
itself seems to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Until
recently the BnF call mark was Vm1 947 but in July 2005, following its iden-
tification, the source was transferred into the Réserve where it is now Rés.
Vmd. ms 52.8 (See Figure 1.)
The Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno radically changes our view of Striggio
since it is his most complex surviving work in any category, his magnum opus.
The fact that the work is extraordinary is not, perhaps, so surprising. Striggio
was known for his beautiful playing on the lute and the viol but above all
for his remarkable playing of an outsize instrument, a lirone perfetto of excep-
tionally large proportions, whose nearly twenty strings tuned in fourths and
fifths allowed him to play full harmony in four parts, to great effect. This rep-
utation for out-of-the-ordinary achievement also included his virtuoso use of
complex musical notation, as is shown by a famous example from the madri-
gal All’acqua sagra, scored up and cited with admiration by Thomas Morley
in 1597 (see below, note 86). And several festive works by him use large forces,
the most unusual until the discovery of the Mass being Ecce beatam lucem.
These exceptional aspects of his musicianship have rarely been stressed in
recent times other than as freakish sides to what has been viewed as a rather
unexceptional musical personality. Indeed, modern criticism has tended to see
6. Butchart, “Musical Journey,” 11.

7. David Butchart, “The Letters of Alessandro Striggio: An Edition with Translation and
Commentary,” Research Chronicle 23 (1990): 6. (See also p. 27: “the mass, now lost.”) All subse-
quent citations from Striggio’s letters are from this edition. See also Annie Cœurdevey, Roland de
Lassus (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 138: “the grandiose Mass (of which no trace remains)” (“la
grandiose messe [dont on n’a pas gardé trace]”); Hugh Keyte, Disc notes for Thomas Tallis,
“Spem in alium,” Tallis Latin Church Music 1, compact disc, EMI CDC 7 49555 2 (1989), 10:
“This lost Mass. . . .” Iain Fenlon mentions the Mass but does not include it in either the list of
surviving works or the list of lost works (“Striggio, Alessandro,” in The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. [2001], 24:577).
8. A microfilm has been available since 1965 (reference “Bobine 8288”) The manuscript’s
earlier call number Vm1 947 dates from the twentieth century. Still earlier call numbers were V.m.
738 and then V.m. 76, both of which appear on the partbooks.
Figure 1 Alessandro Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, in forty parts. Opening page of
the first part (choir I/1), showing the first Kyrie (a8), the Christe (tacet), the second Kyrie (tacet),
and the opening of the Gloria (a40). Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés. Vmd. ms 52
(olim Vm1 947).
Striggio as conservative and has concentrated comment on his music for the
Florentine intermedii and on the madrigal cycle Il cicalamento delle donne al
bucato (1569).
The forty-part Mass invites us to examine his position again. Since it is a
commonplace to stress spectacular display in connection with the Medici
themselves, we are faced with the question of how much the extravagant
aspects of such a musician reflect the grandiose tendencies of the Medici court,
or the extent to which his own personal tastes in this direction made him a
suitable person to become the highest paid musician at the Medici court.9 The
Mass not only provides a larger context for Ecce beatam lucem, it also illumi-
nates Spem in alium (including aspects of Tallis’s forty-part writing), and gives
us the Italian example that is most likely to have inspired the Englishman.
Striggio’s Mass draws our attention to, and deepens our understanding of,
the development of massive polychoral compositions in Florence. Earlier
9. On Striggio’s position at the Medici court, see Kirkendale, Court Musicians, 68, which
shows that his salary was greater than that of any other recorded musician at court, and indeed
unequalled until 1672.
works for multiple choirs had largely been psalms set for double choir. The
motets and psalms published by Phinot in Lyon in 1548, the psalm settings
by Ruffino in Treviso, Alberti in Bergamo, and Passetto in Padua, and the
famous psalms published by Willaert in Venice in 1550 all use eight-part
double choirs.10 Ruffino had used polychoral technique for a Mass setting,
Missa verbum bonum, but again in only eight voices. Yet there is an identifiable
repertoire of pieces in thirty, forty, fifty, and sixty parts that, in sheer number
of voices, exceeds anything that was happening elsewhere in the 1560s. Eight
surviving works are shown in Table 1.11 A considerable number of further ref-
erences are known to exceptionally large-scale polyphonic works, all dating
from the period 1557 to 1601, and most of them are Florentine. This Floren-
tine repertoire deserves further study on its own terms as an identifiable
corpus, a distinct stylistic phenomenon, responding to specific architectural,
dynastic, and cultural realities. The extravagant polychoral music that was
developed during the 1560s by Striggio and his colleagues such as Stefano
Rossetto (fl. 1560–80) was not a case of Florence beating Venice at its own
game, or even anticipating the Venetian achievement. It was an attempt to do
something else. These pieces, all of which were no doubt linked to unusually
spectacular occasions, were meant to impress by their abnormal splendor. In
other words, Striggio’s forty-part Mass is not a freak, exceptional though it
may be, any more than Spem in alium is “completely without precedent any-
where in Europe.”12
10. Dominique Phinot’s psalms were included in Liber secundus mutetarum, sex, septem, et
octo vocem (Lyon: Beringen, 1548). Two of Ruffino d’Assisi’s psalm settings survive, and seven
others are incomplete. Gasparo Alberti’s choir was already singing Vesper psalms with two choirs
in cori spezzati in 1536, according to Pietro Aaron’s letter to Giovanni del Lago, dated 13 March
1536: “e qua fu cantata un vespro a dui chori da loro a psalmi spezzati” (Bonnie J. Blackburn,
Edward Lowinsky, and Clement A. Miller, eds., A Correspondence of Renaissance Musicians [Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1991], 709–10). Giordano Passetto’s twelve settings of Vespers Psalms are
all for double choir. Adriano Willaert’s most influential double-choir psalms were printed in Di
Adriano et di Jachet. I salmi . . . a uno et a duoi chori (Venice: Gardano, 1550).
11. I am grateful to John Griffiths and Philippe Canguilhem for contributions to this list, and
to Bonnie Blackburn for generously sharing with me her unpublished information concerning
Pesciolini.
12. Other works in many parts include: (1) the Deo gratias, a36, attributed to Ockeghem;
(2) the canonic Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, a24, attributed to Josquin; (3) Stefano
Rossetto’s “carmen xxiiii vocibus,” O pax altorum placida o concordia regum (1571; lost);
(4) Padovano’s Missa a 24 (dating from before 1568) in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Musiksammlung, Mus. Hs. 16702 Mus., fol. 240v (source pre-1575); (5) Leonhard Lechner’s
wedding motet Quid chaos, a24 (1582); (6) two motets, Cantate Domino and Laudate
Dominum in sanctis ejus, both a24, published by Jacob Handl [Gallus] in his Opus musicum 4
(Prague: Nigrin, 1590); and (7) Robert Carver’s O bone Jesu, a19 (British Library, En 5.1.15).
Later works include: (1) Orazio Benevoli’s Mass, a48 (1628/1650; lost); (2) the Missa
Salisburgiensis and the motet Plaudite tympana (both a53 and probably dating from 1682),
generally attributed to Biber; and (3) Gregorio Ballabene’s Kyrie and Gloria, a48 (before 1772).
I am grateful to Patrick Macey, Marc Desmet, and Lavern Wagner for contributions to this list.
Table 1 Sixteenth-Century Works in Thirty or More Parts
Author Title Voices Date Source
Anonymous Fuga a quarenta: Unum colle deum ne iures vana per a40 (Canon pre-1557 Luys Venegas de Henestrosa, Libro de Cifra
eum [instrumental arrangement of a vocal work?] 40 in 4) Nueva para tecla, harpa y vihuela (Alcalá de
Henares: Brocar, 1557), fol. 59v
Alessandro Striggio Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno a40, with probably Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés.
Agnus Dei 1565–66 Vmd. ms 52 (olim Vm1 947)
a60
Thomas Tallis Spem in alium nunquam habui a40 probably London, British Library, Egerton MS. 3512
1567–68 (and other later sources)
Stefano Rossetto Consolamini popule meus a50 certainly Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. Ms.
pre-1583 1536, no. 104
(incomplete; thirty-two parts survive)
Alessandro Striggio Ecce beatam lucem a40 (dated 1587 Zwickau, Ratsschulbibliothek Mus. 109.1
in the source,
but no doubt
earlier)
Cristofano Malvezzi O fortunato giorno a30 1589 at latest Intermedii et Concerti, fatti per la Commedia
(reducing to rappresentata in Firenze nelle Nozze del
six real Serenissimo Don Ferdinando Medici, et Madama

contrapuntal Christiana di Loreno, Gran Duchi di Toscana
parts) (Venice: Vincenti, 1591)
Biagio Pesciolini “una musica a 40 voci,” described by Zacconi a40 1590? Pesaro, Biblioteca Oliveriana, MS 559
Giovanni Gabrieli Magnificat a33 Undated Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Musiksammlung, Mus. Hs. 16708 Mus., fol.
165v (incomplete)
The known performances of the Mass took place in 1567, four years after
the close of the Council of Trent. The work occupies a brilliantly defined mid-
dle ground between two ostensibly irreconcilable stylistic demands. On the
one hand, Striggio basically adopts the simplified approach to word setting
approved by the Council as an expression of liturgical decorum, with great
clarity of verbal declamation achieved through pervasive use of homophony
and syllabic writing. (It is not yet clear to what extent this is the product of
a concern for such decorum and to what extent it results from the strictly tech-
nical fact that extensive imitation in so many parts is hardly practical except
for special moments.) On the other hand, the Mass also fulfills the particular
requirements of great Renaissance princes for a quite different kind of deco-
rum, normally incompatible with simplicity, namely the use of spectacular
display as an expression of exceptional worldly power, “for we princes are set
as it were upon stages, in the sight and view of all the world” (to borrow
Elizabeth I’s famous words to Parliament in 1586). Courtly decorum nor-
mally required the music in a private royal chapel, like the other decorations,
vestments, paintings, and furniture, to be ornate and rich, in accordance with
royal status.13 The sonorities that Striggio created, for voices and instruments
in forty parts, amply express this cultural imperative and result in music that,
despite being largely syllabic and textually intelligible, is nevertheless also any-
thing but simple and is in no way designed for the liturgy of a parish church.
The purpose of the present article is to outline the Mass’s exceptional poli-
tical significance in the years 1565–69 (first in the context of the Medici
family’s new dynastic connections after an important marriage, and second in
connection with Cosimo de’ Medici and his descendants being awarded the
title of Grand Duke), to discuss its links with Ecce beatam lucem and Spem in
alium, and to indicate some of the work’s more salient musical features.
Further details concerning the manuscript and the curious reasons why it
escaped notice for so long are given in the Appendix.
As for the closing movement, the second Agnus Dei, it is indeed in sixty
real parts (five twelve-part choruses). That a repertoire of such large-scale
works was known in Florence is confirmed by a longwinded passage added
to the second edition of Vincenzo Galilei’s Fronimo Dialogo (Venice: Scotto,
1584). At one point, the character Fronimo refers to “the author of this
Dialogue” [Galilei] and states: “I have also seen him many times intabulate
[for lute] and play several times music for 40, 50, and 60 parts.”14 The music
13. The question of stylistic decorum in the late sixteenth century, and the three main rhetor-
ical styles that embody it, has been a locus classicus for stylistic discussion of poetry of the period, in
particular since Rosemond Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery: Renaissance Poetic and
Twentieth-Century Critics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947); see chap. 9, “The
Criterion of Decorum” (192–250).
14. “Gli ho veduto in oltre intauolare & sonare piu volte musiche a quaranta, a cinquanta & à
sessanta voci” (Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo Dialogo . . . Nuovamente ristampato [Venice: Scotto,
1584], 104–5; English translation from Vincenzo Galilei, Fronimo, 1584, trans. and ed. Carol
in forty voices was most likely Florentine in origin and probably by Striggio
(the Mass and Ecce beatam lucem being obvious candidates); his colleague
Rossetto’s Consolamini popule meus (see Table 1) is in fifty parts; and the only
known music in sixty parts is the second Agnus Dei of Striggio’s Missa sopra
Ecco sì beato giorno.15 Although short, this movement is a virtuoso demon-
stration of polyphonic extravagance, and its position in the history of Western
music may justly be called unique.16
I. The Mass and Striggio’s 1566–1567 Journey to Vienna,

Munich, and Paris
The striking international dimension of the Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno
derives largely from its having apparently been used in 1567 in conjunction
with the Medici’s reinforcement of their dynastic links with several of Europe’s
leading ruling families. The work was also offered as a gift to the emperor at
exactly the moment when Cosimo de’ Medici was hoping that Maximilian II
would approve granting him the title of Archduke, a royal rank given two years
later by the pope (but with the title of Grand Duke).17 In France the Mass pro-
vided an opportunity for both the Medici and the Gonzaga families to demon-
strate their powerful influence at the Valois Court. As a de facto cultural tool
in a kind of international musical diplomacy, it has no equal in the sixteenth
century.18
Surviving letters relating to Striggio’s journey include four detailed refer-
ences to the Mass in forty voices.
MacClintock [Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler Verlag, 1985],

159). I am grateful to Philippe Canguilhem for directing me to the Fronimo passage. See also
Philippe Canguilhem, Fronimo de Vincenzo Galilei (Tours: Minerve, Centre d’Études Supérieures
de la Renaissance, 2001), 163–64.
15. Striggio, apart from being a virtuoso performer on the viol and lirone, also played the
lute. One possible modus operandi for performing a forty-part work would have been to assemble
five (or ten?) lutenists and/or keyboard players to try it over; this would have been easier than as-
sembling forty (or sixty) singers. (Note that Galilei moved to Florence only in 1572.)
16. It surpasses Rossetto’s fifty-part Consolamini popule meus (pre-1583) as well as the much
later fifty-three-part Plaudite tympana or the fifty-three-part Missa Salisburgensis (1682?).
17. Cosimo de’ Medici (1519–1574; ruling from 1537), created Grand Duke by Pope Pius V
in 1569, was the first to hold the title. Since the emperor approved the title only in 1575, the first
Medici to hold it with imperial approval was his son Francesco. The title “Grand Duke” was not
used in most of Europe, but existed in Muscovy, Lithuania, and Silesia.
18. There is nothing new, of course, in the idea of the Medici having used music as a political
tool. Anthony M. Cummings has traced the history of such patronage in the early sixteenth cen-
tury in The Politicized Muse: Music for Medici Festivals, 1512–1537 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1992). See also Nino Pirrotta, Li due Orfei: Da Poliziano a Monteverdi (Turin:
Einaudi, 1975); and Ludovico Zorzi, Il teatro e la città: Saggi sulla scena italiana (Turin: Einaudi,
1977).
1. A letter dated 3 March 1567,19 written to Cosimo’s son Francesco de’

Medici,20 gives details of his movements during the previous three
months. He had arrived in Vienna on 31 December but unfortunately
Maximilian II had been absent. Striggio left Vienna a week later and
soon caught up with the emperor in Brno: “I presented the Mass for
40 voices to him, and he said that I could not have given him anything
that would have pleased him more. He did not hear it, because he did
not have all of his musicians with him; but he told me that he really
wished to hear it as soon as he returned to Vienna.”21
2. Striggio’s next stop was Munich. He told Francesco that he left Brno on
22 January 1567; he therefore arrived in Munich no later than the be-
ginning of February. This time the Mass did receive a performance, in a
liturgical context and in front of Duke Albrecht V.22 “As soon as the
Duke learnt of my arrival in Munich, he wished me to perform on all of
my instruments and also wished to hear my Mass for 40 voices at sung
mass in his great hall, whereupon I was forced to give him my very own
copy; and it was sung very well. I stayed for ten days in Munich, where
his Excellency granted me infinite favors and made me infinite offers.”23
19. All dates in this article are in modern fashion with the year beginning on 1 January rather
than on 25 March (the Feast of the Annunciation).
20. Francesco de’ Medici (1541–1587), prince regent from 11 June 1564 and Grand Duke
from 1574. Although it had been Cosimo who had appointed Striggio, already in 1561 Agostino
Lapini calls Striggio “musician of prince Francesco” (“musico del principe Francesco”); Agostino
Lapini, Diario fiorentino di Agostino Lapini dal 252 al 1596, ed. G. O. Corazzini (Florence:
Sansoni, 1900), 132. In 1567 Striggio addresses his official letters to Francesco, whom he calls his
“most beloved employer” (“Patron mio Colendissimo”). They had known each other since at
least Striggio’s arrival at the Florentine court in 1559, when Francesco was only eighteen years old
(about four years younger than Striggio himself).
21. “li donai la Messa a 40, et mi disse ch’io non li potevo aver donato cosa che li fosse stato
più grata, non la sentì per che non haveva tutta la sua Musica seco, ma mi disse bene volerla sentire
subito fosse a Vienna” (quoted in Butchart, “Musical Journey,” 3 [and for a diplomatic transcrip-
tion of the original Italian, 14]). See also idem, “Letters,” 23–24. Fenlon states that the Mass
“was performed in both Paris and Vienna during his travels around Europe in 1567” (“Striggio,”
577), but the surviving documents show it was not performed in Vienna (or Brno), at least not in
Striggio’s presence, and (as explained below) the known French performance was not in Paris.
22. Albrecht von Wittelsbach (1528–1579), Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria from 1550.
23. “Agionto in Monicho subito il signor Duca il seppe et mi volse sentire de tutti i miei istru-
menti, et volse sentire in la sua sala grande la mia Messa a 40 a messa cantata, dove son sta sfor-
ciato di donarli la mia coppia istessa, la quale fu cantata molto bene. son stato dieci giornj in
Monacho dove sua Eccellentia mi a fatto infinitissimi favori et proferte” (quoted in Butchart,
“Musical Journey,” 3). See also idem, “Letters,” 23–24. Note that the infinite favors included a
payment of 100 florins, dated 12 February 1567, no doubt in acknowledgment of the “gift”
(“Musical Journey,” 8 and note 17; and Kirkendale, Court Musicians, 70). See also Adolf
Sandberger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der bayerischen Hofkapelle unter Orlando di Lasso, 3 vols. in 2
(Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894–95), 3:73. Robert Lindell notes in another connection that
“the rather large reward of 100 Gulden is a clear indication of . . . appreciation. Such a large
amount was rarely used except to recognize the dedication of entire madrigal or motet books by
3. Next, there is a letter written by the Mantuan agent at the French court,
Hippolito Galvagni, to his duke, Guglielmo Gonzaga.24 Dated 11 May
1567, a Sunday, it gives further details of the circumstances under which
the Mass was heard by Charles IX, the sixteen-year-old French king, and
Catherine de’ Medici, his Italian mother.25 It also refers to the sixty-part
Agnus Dei and the important role played by Guglielmo Gonzaga’s
younger brother: “Strigino the musician has arrived here at the court,
whom His Majesty received willingly and desires to take into his service,
but he [Striggio] does not wish to remain here. His Majesty has heard
him play on both the viol and on the lira and today, indeed, has heard
his Mass for 40 voices and the Agnus for 60, and the people who sang
it were brought together by his Lord the Duke, Your Excellency’s
younger brother, that is, the singers of his Excellency, to all of whom he
gave dinner in his lodgings, and after dinner, later on, they sang the
Mass, which greatly pleased everyone in equal measure, but above all
the musicians of this court.”26
4. Finally, Striggio wrote again to Francesco from France on Sunday 18 May
1567, exactly one week after Galvagni’s message, stating that he had by
then been at the French court for more than a month. He had there-
fore arrived by mid-April at the latest. “The King and Queen have
wished to hear me play, and also to have sung my 40-part Mass, which,
by the grace of God, was performed very well and satisfied the King
greatly.”27
composers of the rank of Monte or Lasso.” It corresponds to about three months’ salary
(“Stefano Rossetti at the Imperial Court,” in Musicologia humana: Studies in Honor of Warren
and Ursula Kirkendale, ed. Siegfried Gmeinwieser, David Hiley, and Jörg Riedlbauer [Florence:
Olschki, 1994], 160).
24. Guglielmo Gonzaga (1538–1587), Duke of Mantua from 1550.
25. Charles IX (1550–1574), the second son of Henri II, became king in 1560 on the death
of his elder brother, François II. Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589) was the great-granddaughter
of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Her parents were Lorenzo II de’ Medici and Madeleine de La Tour
d’Auvergne. She had married the future Henri II of France in 1533. The direct Medici ancestor
she shared with Cosimo was Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (1360–1429).
26. “Egli è arrivato qui alla corte il Strigino musico, il quale sua Maestà ha visto volontieri et
desidera d’intratenerlo al suo servitio ma egli non vi voria rimaner’. Sua Maestà l’ha sentito sonar’
e di viola et di lira, et hoggi a ponto ha sentita la sua messa a 40 et l’Agnius a 60, et queste gienti
ch’hanno cantato sono stati coadunati dal Signor Ducha fratello di Vostra Eccellentia, cioè dalli
cantori di sua Eccellentia, a quali tutti ha fatto dar’ da desinare nel suo allogimento, et doppoi lo
desinar’ susu il tardi hano cantata la messa, la quale è molto sodisfatta gualmente a tutti, massime
alli musici di questa corte” (printed in Butchart, “Musical Journey,” 16). I have slightly modified
Butchart’s translation, but have retained his version of the Italian. See also Fenlon, Music and
Patronage, 1:141–42n50. The letter is there dated 1562, an error repeated by Keyte in his edition
of Striggio, Ecce beatam lucem; the correct date of 1567 is given by Butchart.
27. “il Re et la Regina mi an voluto sentire, et anno voluto far cantare la mia Messa a 40 la
quale per gratia de Dio fu detta molto bene et satisfece molto al Re” (quoted in Butchart,
“Musical Journey,” 15). See also idem, “Letters,” 25–27.
According to Striggio’s own letters, after leaving Florence he had first

visited Mantua (in early December 1566). He was ideally placed to make a
courtesy visit to the Gonzaga court. Since he had been born in Mantua of a
noble family he had a particular relation with Guglielmo Gonzaga; moreover,
Gonzaga was himself a composer. The next two main stops on his journey, the
Habsburg court in Vienna and the Wittelsbach court in Munich, were places
in which he could be assured of an equally warm personal welcome, not only
for diplomatic reasons but also because music was very highly prized at both
courts.
Maximilian’s court, having over eighty musicians, both singers and instru-
mentalists, was certainly one of the few courts in Europe where a Mass in forty
parts could have been of any practical use.28 Striggio must have been particu-
larly disappointed in catching up with the emperor in Brno to find that no
performance was possible there. In Munich, the musical establishment was
also one of the finest and largest in Europe.29 Lassus had been appointed
Hofkapellmeister in 1563, so the performance in February 1567 may have
taken place under his watchful eye; it was certainly Lassus who, one year later,
directed the three performances of another (unidentified) forty-part work by
Striggio, as described by the Neapolitan composer Massimo Troiano, who
worked in Munich.30 Since in 1567 Striggio was in Munich for only ten days,
the musicians appear to have had about a week to prepare the complex Mass.
The fact that he was so satisfied says much for the professionalism of Lassus’s
colleagues and implies that Striggio had arrived equipped with a full set of
performing parts, presumably for both singers and instrumentalists.
After his visits to Mantua, Vienna, and Munich, the visit to France brought
him to the court of the young king Charles IX.31 (Figure 2 shows a portrait of
28. The Kapellmeister, Jacobus Vaet, died in Vienna on 8 January 1567, a couple of days after
Striggio set off for Brno. Philippe de Monte (1521–1603) was appointed as his successor only
eighteen months later.
29. See Albert Smijers, “Die kaiserliche Hofmusik-Kapelle von 1543–1619,” Studien zur
Musikwissenschaft 6 (1919): 139–86; 7 (1920): 102–44; 8 (1921): 176–206; 9 (1922): 43–81.
See also Wolfgang Boetticher, Orlando di Lasso und seine Zeit, 1532–1594 (Kassel: Bärenreiter,
1958; rev. ed., Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel, 1999), 154–69. For more recent surveys of
Lassus’s life, see Horst Leuchtmann, Orlando di Lasso: Sein Leben (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf &
Härtel, 1976); and Cœurdevey, Roland de Lassus.
30. Massimo Troiano, Dialoghi . . . ne’ quali si narrano le cose piu notabili fatte nelle Nozze
dello Illustriss. & Eccell. Prencipe Gvglielmo VI [=IV]. Conte Palatino del Reno, e Duca di Bauiera;
e dell’Illustriss. & Eccell. Madama Renata di Loreno (Venice: Zaltieri, 1569), 147. See facsimile
with German translation and commentary by Horst Leuchtmann (Munich: Katzbichler, 1980),
308. The character called Fortunio says, “A forty-part motet was sung and played which was wor-
thy of all honor and praise,” and when asked who composed this unheard-of work, replies “Signor
Alessandro Striggio, gentleman of Mantua” (“fece cantare e sonare un Motetto a quaranta voci, il
quale fu degno d’ogni honore e laude” . . . “Il signor Alessandro Striggio gentilhuomo
Mantuano”).
31. On the way, he also stopped at Innsbruck and spent several days in Augsburg.
Figure 2 Charles IX; portrait by the Venetian engraver Nicolò Nelli, dated 1567, the year of
Striggio’s visit to Paris. Private collection.
him, dated 1567.32) Charles’s mother, the French dowager queen Catherine
de’ Medici, was a direct and legitimate descendant of Lorenzo il Magnifico.
She had been queen to Henri II and was the mother of three French kings
(François II, Charles IX, and Henri III). In 1567 she was Gouvernante de
France, in effect the regent. Cosimo de’ Medici and Catherine were not close
but they had both been born in Florence in the same year, 1519.33
Unlike the Munich performance of the Mass, the French one on 11 May
1567 apparently took place nonliturgically, despite the day being a Sunday.
Assuming that the “dinner” (“lo desinar”) refers to the midday meal (the
diner at the French court, which was the main meal of the day), it seems
likely that the performance took place on the Sunday afternoon. The provision
of a meal for the musicians is a nice touch, especially since they were so numer-
ous. The person who organized all this was Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga’s
younger brother, Luigi Ludovico Gonzaga (1539–1595), known to French
history as Louis de Gonzague,34 whose marriage in 1565 to the Duchess of
Nevers had given him the title Duke of Nevers. He was one of the French
32. For information about the Venetian engraver Nicolò Nelli (whose father was Florentine),
see Fabio Piloni, “Nuovi contributi per Nicolò Nelli e Gaspare Osello,” Grafica d’arte, no. 29
(1997): 8–9; and idem, “Nicolò Nelli: Contributi per un catalogo,” Grafica d’arte, no. 31
(1997): 7–14. The portrait of Charles IX (no. 18/15 in Piloni’s catalog) is part of a larger series of
nearly forty such portraits, published in Venice in 1569, including many of the key players in this
story: Pope Pius V; Emperors Charles V, Ferdinand II, and Maximilian II; rulers Elizabeth I,
Catherine de’ Medici, and Cosimo de’ Medici; as well as Lassus’s colleague, the musician
Massimo Troiano. For supplementary information on Nelli see Gert Jan van der Sman, “Alcune
precisizioni su Nicolò Nelli e Gaspare Osello,” Grafica d’arte, no. 37 (1999): 2–9. I am grateful
to Philippe Rouillard of the Bibliothèque nationale de France for information about Nelli.
33. The diplomatic fruit from this came in the next generation, in two ways. First, in 1589
Francesco de’ Medici’s successor, his younger brother Ferdinando II de’ Medici, married
Christine of Lorraine, the granddaughter of Catherine de’ Medici. Second, since Charles IX
died young (as did his brother Henri III), the next French king was Henri IV, who, in 1600, mar-
ried Maria de’ Medici (Marie de Médicis), the daughter of Francesco de’ Medici and Johanna of
Austria. These two marriages also produced musical fruit in, respectively, Malvezzi’s 1589
Intermedii et Concerti (published in 1591) and Peri’s Euridice (1600).
34. His grandmother, Anne d’Alençon, had been French. Louis had lived in France (more or
less as a hostage) since the age of ten. He had been raised at the French court of Henri II, and had
been naturalized in 1550. Gonzague made a name for himself at the age of eighteen at the battle
of Saint-Quentin on 10 August 1557 and soon became one of the most important members of
the French nobility and a pair du royaume. In 1565 the duchy of Nevers passed to the Gonzaga
family as a result of his marriage to the Duchess of Nevers, Henriette de Clèves (Henrietta of
Cleves). That he should have sponsored Striggio is in keeping with his other known actions to
present the best of Italian artistry in France. He arranged for the Venetian art of glassblowing
to be introduced to Nevers (and the town later became known as the “French Murano”); he also
introduced there the art of tin-glazed earthenware, known in Italy as “majolica” and in France
and many other European countries as “faïence.”
Queen’s closest advisers.35 If the Florentine connections with the Medici fam-
ily helped Striggio’s diplomatic coup at the French court, it was his native
Mantuan connections with the Gonzaga family that provided practical help at
the musical, financial, and culinary levels. This partially explains why, once
again, Striggio was the ideal man for the job and provides a further possible
reason for his having first stopped in Mantua on his way from Florence to
Vienna (apart from no doubt attending to private family business): he could
have set in motion the diplomatic steps necessary to give a Mantuan dimen-
sion to the French visit four months later.
When he had been growing up in Mantua, the prince destined to be ruler
had been Francesco Gonzaga.36 As a young nobleman (albeit illegitimate),
Striggio would have had relatively easy social contact with both of the younger
brothers, Guglielmo (who became duke only after Francesco’s unexpected
death) and Luigi Ludovico (Louis de Gonzague). At the French court, due to
his status as “gentilhuomo Mantovano,” he would have been able to com-
municate directly with the youngest of the three Gonzaga princes. He was
slightly older than Luigi/Louis but they were both still in their late twenties.
When Striggio arrived, Catherine de’ Medici had recently returned from a
three-year Royal Progress around France, designed to present her adolescent
son to his people. They had traveled three thousand miles, during 829 days
from 24 January 1564 to 1 May 1566.37 The French court had been itinerant
for several generations. Under François I, although the main feasts such as
Christmas had usually been spent in Paris, the court had settled into peripatetic
habits, moving from residence to residence every couple of months. Galvagni
does not specifically state that the performance of the Mass took place at the
Duke of Nevers’s lodgings (although he seems to imply that), only that the
meal for the musicians did. However, given the number of musicians involved,
the performance is unlikely to have taken place far from those lodgings.
Galvagni’s letter was written from Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, about ten miles
southeast of the center of Paris. The French court was in residence at the
Château de Saint-Maur for most of the month of May 1567 and a surviving
letter from Catherine de’ Medici dated 11 May 1567 is signed from Saint-
Maur. The duke’s appartements were presumably in the Château de Saint-
Maur itself (which unfortunately no longer exists).38
35. He was one of the seven members of the inner circle of power that took the fateful deci-
sion concerning the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Only one of the seven, Tavannes,
was fully French by birth; the others were all Italian or half-Italian. Catherine’s doctor and her
(in)famous astrologer, Cosimo Ruggieri, were also Italian.
36. Francesco Gonzaga (1533–1550), Duke of Mantua from 1540.
37. Some lute players, some Italian violinists, and a few singers had accompanied the Progress.
38. The French performance of the Mass did not therefore take place in Paris. The Château
de Saint-Maur, first built in 1541, had been acquired by Catherine in 1563. She had it consider-
ably enlarged in the mid 1560s. It was destroyed in 1796, shortly after the French Revolution. It
Catherine’s court was ostensibly extravagant, but financial circumstances

and the costs of internal political unrest due to the wars of religion were emp-
tying the state’s coffers. She did not maintain a permanent resident musical
establishment to rival those of Maximilian II, Albrecht V, or Cosimo de’
Medici. Certain institutions such as Notre-Dame and the Sainte Chapelle had
their musicians, their choirboys, their organists, and their masters of the
choristers, but for the 1560s little precise information is available on them.
Galvagni’s letter implies that the musicians who performed the Mass were not
those of the royal household and that the costs were not borne by the crown.
Yet some of the musicians of the royal household must have been among those
referred to when he reports that the Mass pleased “above all the musicians of
this court.” Although some French musicians must have joined in the perfor-
mance, or at least been present, it would be rash to conclude that Galvagni
is simply referring to French musicians being impressed by Italian music.39 On
the contrary, many of the musicians present must have been Italian. Laurent
Guillo has shown that the Italian violinists working at the French court at
this time were by no means limited to the famous “Bande de Beaujoyeux,”
who played regularly at court from early May 1566. Over thirty Italian violin-
ists worked at the court between 1555 and 1581.40 Striggio would have felt
is not the present Villa Medici (the Musée de Saint-Maur), which originated in the late fifteenth
century and was known in the sixteenth century as l’hostel des Pilliers; this building has been called
Villa Medici only since 1854. The Saint-Maur archives are currently in the Archives municipales.
39. French composers associated in one way or another with the French court, or possibly
present in Paris in 1567, include: Pierre Certon (ca. 1510–1572), master of the choristers at
Notre-Dame; Guillaume Costeley (ca. 1530–1606), organist and valet de chambre to Charles IX;
Nicolas de la Grotte (ca. 1530–ca. 1600), attached to the court of Charles IX’s brother, Henri de
Valois (the future Henri III) and a colleague of Costeley; Jean Maillard (ca. 1515–after 1570),
who in 1565 had dedicated books of motets to both Charles IX and Catherine de’ Medici; and
possibly even Jacques Arcadelt (ca. 1505–1568), who died in Paris after spending many years in
Italy (including having been in Medici employ in 1535), and had been honored in France with
the title of regius musicus since 1555. However, nothing yet confirms the involvement of any of
these French musicians, either as performers or as bystanders, during the French performance of
Striggio’s forty-part Mass.
40. This figure coincides with the well-known statement by Pierre de Brantôme (ca.
1539–1614) referring to “up to thirty violins” (“les viollons montans jusqu’a une trentaine”) for
the ballet that Catherine de’ Medici put on for the Polish ambassadors in 1573. Among the Italian
violinists at the French court in 1567 were: Baldassare de Belgioioso (=Balthasar de Beaujoyeux,
ca. 1535–ca. 1587); Geronimo Margarino (=Margarin, Mazarin, Magerrin) from Cremona, who
received court payments from 1560 to 1571; Giacomo Mario (=Jacques Marye), who arrived
from Italy with Belgioioso in 1555; Cesare Negri (=Neigret, de Negry, de Nigry, Denegris), who
received payments between 1560 and 1587; Pietro Martyro Sacco (=Mortrosac, Martio Sacro,
Sac), paid between 1560 and 1575; and Luigi Sacco, paid between 1564 and 1581. See Laurent
Guillo, “Un violon sous le bras et les pieds dans la poussière: Les violons italiens du roi durant le
voyage de Charles IX (1564–66),” in La musique, de tous les passetemps le plus beau . . . Hommage
à Jean-Michel Vaccaro, ed. François Lesure and Henri Vanhulst, 207–33 (Paris: Klincksieck,
1998).
relatively at home at the French court, musically, linguistically, and culturally.

Charles IX, Catherine de’ Medici, and Louis de Gonzague all spoke fluent
Italian, and the Mantuan agent Galvagni was presumably also present at the
performance of the Mass.
It would be interesting to know what the composer reported back to
Cosimo and Francesco about the character of the young French king. Charles
has remained a problematic monarch for historians, even apart from his
involvement in the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. In the
assessment of one modern historian, “Charles was a physical and a mental mis-
fit. His powerful body was supported by over-long, spindly legs. His muscu-
lar arms hung from bowed shoulders. He loved music and poetry, but he was
prone to insane, murderous anger and his passion for the chase was, in part, as
he insisted on seeing the spurting blood of the stag, an attempt to exorcise
murderous fantasies.”41 At any rate, a later letter from Striggio indicates that
he was offered a highly lucrative job at the French court, but that he declined
to stay there.
II. The Mass, the Emperor, and the Grand Duke
Striggio’s trip was obviously undertaken with Medici approval, and his letters
make it clear that Francesco knew exactly which Mass was involved. The letter
of 3 March 1567 reads as if the composer had gone (or been sent) to Vienna
with the express intention of giving this great work to the emperor. Since the
known stages of his journey are Florence, Mantua, and Innsbruck, before
Vienna, he would almost certainly have traveled through Verona, Trent, and
Bolzano, traveling through the Brenner Pass (then a mere track for mules and
carts). But why did he make such a difficult journey to Vienna at exactly this
time, right in the middle of winter, crossing the Alps on horseback, with a
manservant and a baggage mule? The gift of such a Mass could certainly not
have been made without direct Medici approval; more likely, it was an osten-
sible gift from Francesco, but implicitly from Cosimo, who is the invisible
power behind the international dimension of the Mass, despite never being
mentioned in the surviving letters that refer to it. Striggio’s journey to Vienna,
and indeed his whole itinerary, must have been approved or planned by the
Medici.
Cosimo de’ Medici knew that a change of generations was coming upon
some of the major courts of Europe. In 1563, in France, Charles IX had been
declared to have reached the legal age of majority (despite being only thirteen
at that time), and in Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand I was aged and ill.42 Ferdi-
nand had died in 1564 and been succeeded by his son Maximilian. The rela-
41. Hugh Ross Williamson, Catherine de’ Medici (London: Michael Joseph, 1973), 195.
42. Ferdinand I (1503–1564), Holy Roman Emperor from 1556, following the abdication of
his brother Charles V.
tionship between Florence and the Holy Roman Empire had been complex
for over thirty years, ever since the emperor Charles V had first granted the title
of Duke of Florence to a Medici, in 1531.43 The empire in fact viewed Florence
as a sort of imperial fiefdom, but Cosimo cleverly used papal power as a coun-
terbalance, to maintain a substantial degree of Florentine independence.
On his forty-fifth birthday, Sunday 11 June 1564, Cosimo had renounced
day-to-day administrative power in favor of Francesco, who thus became
prince regent. The Florentine diarist Agostino Lapini (1515–1592) records
that on that day “a mass of the Holy Spirit was sung in the Duomo, a mass
that served two purposes: it was for the birthday of Duke Cosimo, and also for
this new happiness in the government of the Prince.”44 Lapini was a priest and
chaplain at Santa Maria del Fiore, the Florence Duomo, and in 1567 was also
a “basso di capella del Granduca di Toscana Cosimo Medici”;45 he would have
sung in many of the musical events he records. Cosimo, while giving Francesco
direct early access to government, retained for himself the ducal title and
control over the most important aspects of Florentine foreign policy. For
1565–67 his surviving correspondence with Maximilian is considerably greater
than Francesco’s.46 The two main topics of these letters are the marriage of
Francesco to one of Maximilian’s sisters, Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, and
Cosimo’s dispute over diplomatic precedence with the duke of Ferrara (a
problem dating from 1541 that had become an open feud since 1561).
On Tuesday 18 December 1565, Francesco married Johanna at a solemn
nuptial mass celebrated under Brunelleschi’s great dome in the cathedral
church of Santa Maria del Fiore.47 Little is known about the music heard that
day in the Duomo, but Striggio composed pieces performed in association
43. Charles V had been crowned emperor in Bologna in 1530 by a Medici pope, Clement VIII
(Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici). The preliminaries that took place in Bologna in October 1529 in-
cluded an important decision about the constitutional status of Florence which, when settled by
Alessandro de’ Medici having been created Duke of Florence (although in Florence itself, the title
was referred to as “Duke of the Florentine Republic”), helped pave the way for the Medici pope
to crown the emperor in San Petronio on 24 February 1530, and Alessandro de’ Medici to return
to Florence in 1531. See Cummings, Politicized Muse, 129–31, 140–41.
44. “si cantò una Messa del Spirito Santo in Duomo; qual Messa servi per dua cose cioè: per
la natività del duca Cosimo, e per questa nuova letizia del governo del detto Principe” (Lapini,
Diario, 141).
45. See ibid., xv (citing a document dated 27 August 1567).
46. For the letters to and from Maximilian during these years, see Maximilian II, Die
Korrespondenz Maximilians II, ed. Viktor Bibl, vol. 1, Familienkorrespondenz 1564 Juli 25–1566
August 11 (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1916), and vol. 2, Familienkorrespondenz 1566 August
9–1567 Dezember 27 (Vienna: A. Holzhausen, 1921).
47. Johanna of Austria (1547–1578), princess of Florence (known in Italy as Giovanna de’
Medici) from 1565, Grand Duchess from 1574. She had been crowned two days earlier by the
bishops of Siena and Arezzo; see Lapini, Diario, 149–50; Lapini also records (p. 144) that the
inside of the Duomo, including the two sacristies, had been specially painted white, at great cost,
between 18 June and 18 August 1565. The wedding is sometimes (e.g., in Fenlon, “Striggio”)
given as having taken place on 25 December; the performance of d’Ambra’s comedy La
with the wedding, notably five pieces for three intermedii performed during
the festivities following the wedding.48 Johanna, like her many sisters, was the
daughter of one emperor (Ferdinand I), niece of another (Charles V), sister of
a third (Maximilian II), and would be aunt of a fourth (Rudolph II).49 By this
wedding into the powerful Habsburg clan, the Medici acquired or strength-
ened their ties with several leading families in Europe to whom Johanna’s
many sisters (all Austrian Archduchesses) were already married:
In 1546 Johanna’s oldest sister, Anna, had married Prince Albrecht Wittels-
bach, who in 1550 had succeeded to the title of Duke of Bavaria as
Albrecht V and whose court was in Munich.50
In 1549 another sister, Katharina, had married Francesco Gonzaga, Duke
of Mantua.51
In 1550, following Francesco Gonzaga’s untimely death, his younger
brother Guglielmo had succeeded to the Mantuan dukedom; in 1561
he had renewed Mantua’s link with the Habsburgs by marrying another
of the sisters, Eleonora.52
And on 5 December 1565, two weeks before Francesco and Johanna’s
wedding in Florence, a different dynastic link had been reinforced.
Cofanaria in honor of the marriage, took place on 26 December. For contemporary commen-
taries, see Domenico Mellini, Descrizione dell’ Entrata della sereniss. Reina Giovanna d’Austria Et
dell’Apparato, fatto in Firenze nella venuta, & per le felicissime nozze di S. Altezza . . . Don
Francesco de Medici, Prencipe di Fiorenza, & di Siena (Florence: Heirs of Bernardo Giunta, 1566);
idem, Descrizione Dell’ Apparato Della Comedia Et Intermedii D’essa Recitata in Firenze il giorno
di S. Stefano l’anno 1565 (Florence: Giunta, 1566); [Giovan Battista Cini], Descrizione dell’appa-
rato fatto in Firenze per le nozze dell’illustrissimo ed eccellentissimo don Francesco de’ Medici principe
di Firenze e di Siena e della serenissima regina Giovanna d’Austria, ed. Gaetano Milanesi in I ra-
gionamenti e le lettere edite e inedite di Giorgio Vasari, 8 vols., 8:517–617 (Florence: Sansoni,
1882). For a more recent commentary on the iconography of Johanna’s entrata to Florence on
16 December 1565, see R . A. Scorza, “Vincenzo Borghini and Invenzione: The Florentine
Apparato of 1565,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 57–75. For de-
tails of the festivities in the weeks following Francesco and Johanna’s wedding, see A. M. Nagler,
Theatre Festivals of the Medici, 1539–1637 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964), 13–35.
48. See Howard Mayer Brown, Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: The Music for the
Florentine Intermedii (Rome: American Institute of Musicology, 1973), 96–100.
49. These imperial family connections were first stressed by Antonio Possevino in Vita et
morte della serenissima Eleonora Archiduchessa di Austria et duchessa di Mantova (Rome: Zanetti,
1594; repr., Ferrara: Baldini, 1595; repr., Mantua: Osanna, 1596), 10–11. See David Chambers
and Jane Martineau, eds., Splendours of the Gonzaga: Catalogue, Exhibition 4 November 1981–31
January 1982, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (London: Victoria and Albert Museum,
1981), 210, and the description of item no. 220, a medal of Eleonora of Austria.
50. Anna of Austria (1528–1590), Duchess of Bavaria from 1546.
51. Katharina of Austria (1533–1572), Duchess of Mantua (known in Italy as Catarina
Gonzaga) 1549–1550 and dowager duchess from 1550; in 1553 she married Zygmunt II
August, King of Poland (1520–1572).
52. Eleonora of Austria (1534–1594), Duchess of Mantua (known in Italy as Leonora
Gonzaga) from 1561 and dowager duchess from 1587.
Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara (he had earlier been married to

Francesco de’ Medici’s sister Lucrezia, but she had died in 1560) mar-
ried yet another of Johanna’s elder sisters, Barbara.53 By his own
marriage, Francesco de’ Medici therefore once again became Alfonso II
d’Este’s brother-in-law, this time on the distaff side. The new emperor
scrupulously avoided taking sides in the matter of precedence by marry-
ing at almost the same time his two remaining sisters, Barbara and
Johanna, to the dukes of Ferrara and Florence.54
The diplomatic elegance of Striggio’s itinerary (Mantua, Vienna, Munich,
Paris) would thus have been quite clear to all the principal players in the story.
He visited the Medici relatives in France only after having paid courtesy visits
to Francesco’s new Habsburg in-laws and, in the case of Anna of Bavaria and
Eleonora of Mantua, to their powerful husbands.
Before there had been any question of marrying Francesco to Johanna,
Cosimo had hatched unsuccessful schemes to marry him to a Spanish princess,
and then to a Portuguese princess.55 Pope Pius IV had privately suggested
offering the Medici a royal title to balance things out in such a marriage, but
the title of “king” was felt to be inappropriate. When these marriage negotia-
tions both failed and the candidacy of Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, was
advanced in 1564, the pope proposed making the Medici rulers archdukes,
thereby creating eventual equal status for the consorts.
Either of these proposals would also have settled in Florence’s favor the
question of precedence with Ferrara, but the pope’s death on 9 December
1565, four days after the Ferrara wedding and nine days before the Florence
one, put the plan on hold. Cosimo was concerned about the diplomatic effects
the proposed papal title might have on the Habsburgs. He preferred that the
new title be granted directly by the emperor himself, as had been the Medici’s
ducal title in 1531. Maximilian was advised to recommend that the new title
should be granted only if it met with the approval of Philip II of Spain and of
the Austrian archdukes (Maximilian’s brothers), but they were not enthusiastic.56
Matters came to a head in late 1566 and throughout 1567. At the exact
time Striggio left Florence with the forty-part Mass, Maximilian wrote to
Cosimo (in a letter dated 1 December 1566) referring to the matter of prece-
dence with the duke of Ferrara; and one month later, when Striggio was
leaving Vienna on the way to Brno to catch up with the emperor, Cosimo
replied in a detailed letter dated 6 January 1567, referring slightly stridently to
the “false pretension of the duke of Ferrara concerning precedence.” He
53. Barbara of Austria (1539–1572), Duchess of Ferrara from 1565. Alfonso II d’Este
(1533–1597), Duke of Ferrara from 1559.
54. One early plan to have a double marriage had been abandoned.
55. See Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin: Utet, 1976; 2nd ed., 1982;
repr., 1987), 186–87.
56. Ibid., 184–91.
claimed that he wanted to show that he was not ambitious and asserted that
he would submit to the emperor’s decision; nevertheless, he sharply reminded
Maximilian that Charles V had already made an imperial decision concerning
Florentine precedence thirty years earlier. He also twice offered to explain to
the new pope why the decision should be imperial rather than papal.57
A further letter dated 28 February 1567 included a highly effective post-
script announcing that Francesco’s wife, Johanna—Maximilian’s sister—had
just given birth to a beautiful little girl (una bella figliolina). Francesco added
his own touch with a letter of the same date, saying he would not repeat what
was in his father’s letter and confirming that he placed himself under the
emperor’s command “with all due humility.”58 Both Cosimo and Francesco
wrote again on 1 March, giving further details of the birth of Maximilian’s
niece, with Francesco adding somewhat manipulatively that this new child—
his own daughter—was a fruit of the “augustissima casa d’Austria.” Despite
this campaign of steely Florentine charm, Maximilian continued to prevari-
cate, replying on 14 March 1567 that nothing could yet be decided.
Six months later, on 16 September, the emperor wrote to Alfonso d’Este
still hoping that the controversy over precedence could be settled not by the
full rigor of an imperial legal decree but “calmly and in a friendly manner.”59
On 9 October Cosimo again wrote, more testily and at length, about “the
duke of Ferrara, and his false pretension of precedence, [which is] ridiculous
and vain.” With barely dissimulated anger, he noted that the envoys of the late
pope had proposed settling the matter, but that he, Cosimo, “in order to show
my sweet nature,”60 had been content to let the emperor decide and end
the matter—if only the emperor had deigned to do so and resolve it by a judg-
ment. Cosimo wrote that he had even managed to convince the Holy See
57. “I have read, with all due respect, what Your Majesty writes to me concerning the false
pretension of the duke of Ferrara concerning precedence, to which, even though I was not
obliged to do so since I have the ancient possession [of this precedence], and also [have it] by the
declaration of Charles V, of glorious memory, I nevertheless offered to Your Majesty to submit
myself to your just decision, having rejected the vain conditions and alternatives which that duke
has suggested at various times; and promising now to undertake to convince His Holiness (with
whom the suit is pending) that He be satisfied that Your Majesty should have the right to decide
this matter, to show that I was not ambitious” (“Ho letto con la debita reverentia quel che ella
[V. Mtà] mi scrive intorno alla falsa pretensione del duca di Ferrara in materia di precedentia,
a che, se bene non ero obligato, per haver io l’antico possesso, et con la declaratione ancora di
Carlo V di gloriosa memoria, offersi nondimeno alla Mtà V. di sottomettermi al guiditio suo per
iusticia, havendo recusato le vane conditioni, et alternative che quel duca haveva proposto alcune
volte, promettendo di far offitio all’hora con Sua Santita [dove pende la lite], che ella si con-
tentasse che V. Mtà la decidesse di ragione, si per mostrare che io non ero ambitioso”);
Maximilian II, Korrespondenz II 2:79.
58. See ibid. 2:115–19.
59. “ut haec controversa non juxta summum juris rigorem . . . judiciali cognitione decidatur
et determinetur, sed potius placide et amicabiliter transigatur” (ibid. 2:221).
60. “per fare apparire la mia dolce natura” (ibid. 2:239–40).
to await the imperial decision. He made it clear that his basic position had
been set out most clearly and fully in the letter of 6 January 1567. Finally, on
29 December 1567 Cosimo wrote to Maximilian respectfully but “with the
gravest displeasure,”61 noting that a year’s wait was quite enough, and that he
now owed it to the new pope, Pius V, to honor his wishes. The letter is exceed-
ingly blunt, stating plainly that he will now seek justice in Rome, not wanting
to wait all the rest of his life.62
Pius V agreed to be the godfather to the bella figliolina (Eleonora de’
Medici). On 11 May 1568, the Florentines received another clear indication
that Pius V was favorable to them when he formally sent Johanna a golden
rose that he had blessed. According to Lapini, on Thursday 13 May a Mass
(described as “solennissima”) was sung in the Duomo in celebration of the
event.63 Striggio wrote a special piece in honor of the occasion: Ecco scesa fra
voi nuova angioletta.64 Cosimo continued to make cleverly calculated gestures
towards the papacy. Lapini notes that the Tridentine Rite was rapidly adopted
in Florence, starting in the Duomo on 5 February 1569, even before the new
Tridentine Missal had been issued. On 21 April 1569 Cosimo sent 1,100
troops to fight in France against the Huguenots. Pius V finally responded offi-
cially on 27 August 1569 with a papal bull granting unilaterally to Cosimo and
his descendants the disputed regal rank but with the clever title of grand duke
instead of archduke.65 With it came the right to a royal crown in the Medici
61. “Con mio gravissimo dispiacere, ma con la reverenza che devo” (ibid. 2:289).
62. See ibid. 2:289–90. See also Victor Bibl, “Die Erhebung Herzog Cosimos von Medici
zum Grossherzog von Toscana und die kaiserliche Anerkennung,” Archiv für Österreichische
Geschichte 103 (1913): 29. By this time Cosimo was not in good health. He had had a series of
small strokes and had severe gout.
63. See Lapini, Diario, 158–59.
64. See David S. Butchart, “The Festive Madrigals of Alessandro Striggio,” Proceedings of the
Royal Musical Association 107 (1980–81): 49–50. The work was published in Il secondo libro de
madrigali a cinque voci (Venice: Scotto, 1570).
65. The papal Bull Romanus Pontifex in excelso militantis Ecclesiae Throno disponente refers to
the fact that Cosimo’s help had been requested by the pope (“Quoad a Nobis requisitus”), that
Cosimo had rapidly sent foot soldiers and cavalry (“peditatu, equitatuque alacriter juverit”) to
“bring help to our dearly beloved son in Christ, Charles Most Christian King of the French,
against his rebels and heretics” (“pro ferendo aucilio Carissimo in Christo filio nostro Carolo
Francorum Regi Christianissimo, adversus ejus rebelles, & haereticos”), and notes that Cosimo’s
actions were “for the defense of the Catholic faith” (“ad Catholicae fidei defensionem”). This
refers to the troops sent to France by Cosimo, according to Lapini, on 21 April 1569: “the in-
fantry which the duke Cosimo de’ Medici sent, and the cavalry, to help the King of France against
the Huguenots: which were 1000 infantry and 100 light horsemen” (“la fanteria che mandò il
duca Cosimo de’ Medici, e cavalleria, in adiuto del Re di Francia, contro alli Ugonotti: che furno
1000 fanti e 100 cavalli leggieri”); Diario, 163. After a long preamble establishing the Roman
Pontiff ’s total independence in such matters as the naming and creation of kings and princes, the
pope announced that therefore “we create, constitute, pronounce, and declare Duke Cosimo and
the Successors to the same Duke Cosimo, at present Dukes, to be perpetually in the future Grand
Dukes, and [we create] the Princes of the Province of Tuscany . . . Grand Dukes of the Province
coat of arms. The crown itself was apparently designed by the pope; a detailed
drawing of it was incorporated into the papal bull.66
Lapini records that a “Messa solennissima . . . con Gloria e Credo” was
sung in the Duomo in the presence of the archbishop on 13 December 1569,
“to mark the very great joy at our duke Cosimo de’ Medici having been
granted the right to a royal crown on top of his arms by the pope, Pius V, who
sent him the crown.”67 It is not known who wrote the music for this special
celebratory Mass, but it was Striggio whose musical skills were, once again,
called upon ten weeks later in Rome, on 5 March 1570, for Cosimo’s corona-
tion by the pope as Grand Duke of Tuscany. Butchart has shown that he wrote
the twelve-voice Altr’io che queste spighe alme dorate for the event.68
This is the background to, and subsequent history of, the main preoccupa-
tion of the Florentine court at the time when Striggio set out on his long Euro-
pean journey in late November 1566, just eleven months after the Habsburg-
of Tuscany” (“eumdem Cosmum Ducem ejusque Successores pro tempore existentes Duces,
perpetuis futuris temporibus in Magnos Duces, & Principes Provinciae Etruriae . . . creamus, con-
stituimus, pronunciamus, declaramus, Magnorumque Ducum Etruriae Provinciae”).
66. The crown appears to be no longer extant. Cosimo is shown wearing it in the monumen-
tal state portrait showing him in full regalia, painted in 1603 by Lodovico Cardi, “il Cigoli”
(Florence, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Inv. 1890, no. 3784), and in other portraits; see Karla
Langedijk, “A New Cigoli: The State Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici and a Suggestion concern-
ing the Capella de’ Principi,” The Burlington Magazine 113, no. 823 (1971): 575–79. Con-
cerning the crown itself, see also J. F. Hayward, “An Eighteenth-Century Drawing of the
Grand-Ducal Crown of Tuscany,” The Burlington Magazine 97, no. 631 (1955): 308–11.
67. “A’ dí 13 di dicembre 1569, in martedí mattina, si cantò una Messa solennissima del
Spirito Santo, con Gloria e Credo: acciò fussi più solenne cantolla l’arcivescovo Altoviti so-
pradetto, in segno di grandissima allegrezza, per avere avuto il nostro duca Cosimo de’ Medici
una corona reale sopra alla sua arme delle palle, che glie ne concesse e glie ne mandò papa Pio V”
(Lapini, Diario, 165). Lapini notes that the pope had had inscribed on the crown a Latin text stat-
ing he had given it in recognition of Cosimo’s exemplary zeal for the Catholic religion and out-
standing love of justice, thereby reinforcing the point that he granted the crown by papal right in
acknowledgment of Cosimo’s help in defending Catholicism. Philip II, the Austrian archdukes,
and the emperor formally protested and in 1570 even contemplated military retaliation against
Florence. Cosimo, however, consistently chose the papal side on critical issues. In particular, at the
pope’s insistence, he had the humanist Pietro Carnesecchi arrested and turned over to the Holy
Office (the Roman Inquisition). After being tried, tortured, and condemned for heresy,
Carnesecchi was executed on 1 October 1567.
68. See Butchart, “Festive Madrigals,” 50–51. The work was published in Musica de diversi
auttori illustri per cantar et sonar in concerti a sette, otto, nove, dieci, undeci, et duodeci voci (Venice:
Vincenzi & Amadino, 1584). See also [Marcello Vestri Barbiani], Coronatione del Serenissimo
Signore Cosimo Medici Gran Duca di Toscana, fatta dalla S. di N. S. Pio V in Roma sotto di V. di
Marzo MDLXIX. Con il viaggio et regia entrata di S.A. in Roma (Florence: Sermartelli, 1569
[=1570]); and Domenico Moreni, Della Solenne Incoronazione del Duca Cosimo Medici in Gran
Duca di Toscana fatta dal Som. Pont. S. Pio V. Ragguaglio di Cornelio Firmano Cerimoniere
Pontificio riprodotto . . . (Florence: Magheri, 1819). See also Leonardo Salviati, Orazione . . .
intorno alla coronazione del serenissimo Cosimo Medici gran duca di Toscana (Florence: Sermartelli,
1570).
Medici wedding. It confirms not only the extent to which he was intimately
implicated at a musical level in all these events, but also the significance of the
dates involved. The forty-part Mass was presented to Maximilian II at the most
delicate moment in this complex story, just after Pius IV had first proposed an
archducal title and while Cosimo was hoping that it would also be bestowed
by the emperor in the wake of the recent alliance between the Medici and
the Habsburgs. Cosimo’s later letters show that the real pleading of his case
had been done in his letter of 6 January 1567, which must have reached the
emperor on almost the same day that Striggio arrived in Brno.
The composer’s arrival with his extraordinary musical gift appears to have
been timed, even at the expense and inconvenience of sending him through
the Brenner Pass in midwinter, to help convince the emperor of the Medici’s
worthiness of the royal rank in two ways. The choice to send a setting of
the Ordinary of the Mass, rather than a setting of a humanistic nonliturgical
text such as Ecce beatam lucem, starkly stressed explicitly the Medici’s imper-
turbable Catholic orthodoxy, essential for such an ambition in a time of
reform; and the musical setting in forty parts implicitly showed that as “princes
. . . set as it were upon stages, in the sight and view of all the world” the Medici
could play their royal part.69
With the stakes so high, it was an extraordinary choice of gift, but it was
also a clever one. On 26 June 1564 Maximilian had written to Albrecht V stat-
ing that the Cardinal of Trent—Christoph [Cristoforo] Madruzzo (1512–
1578), a great patron of the arts and passionate lover of music—had sent him
a forty-part work from Rome.70 Albrecht had replied that Lassus had written
a good one, and sent it to Maximilian. The emperor wrote again to Albrecht
on 26 July 1564 (the day after his father died and he became emperor), say-
ing he was returning the “gesang” by Orlando, with the forty-one parts, pre-
sumably forty vocal parts plus a general Bassus ad organum part.71 (Both works
69. In December 1572, the next pope, Gregory XIII, sent the envoy Marcantonio Colonna
to convince Philip II to agree to the granducal title. The continued imperial delays were partly
caused by Cosimo’s own actions. In 1570 he remarried. His bride, Camilla Martelli, was not of
noble birth, but on becoming grand duchess she acquired precedence over Francesco’s wife
Johanna; the Habsburgs viewed this as lèse majesté since Johanna was an archduchess in her own
right. Maximilian’s eventual capitulation in 1576 may therefore be seen as finally granting the title
of grand duchess to a person of appropriate rank, his own sister.
70. Madruzzo had been essentially resident in Rome since about 1560. For more on
Madruzzo as a musical patron, see the following three publications by Romano Vettori: “Note
storiche sul patronato musicale di Cristoforo Madruzzo Cardinale di Trento (1512–1578),”
Rivista italiana di musicologia 20 (1985): 3–43; “Mottetti politici alla corte di Cristoforo
Madruzzo (1512–1578),” Quadrivium, Studi di filologia e musicologia 30 (1989): 5–68; and
“Musiche per i Principi Vescovi: La corte del Clesio e dei Madruzzo,” in Musica e società nella
storia trentina, ed. Rossana Dalmonte, 241–79 (Trent: U.C.T., 1994).
71. Robert Lindell mentions only the Lassus work (“Stefano Rossetto,” 163). Maximilian’s
letter of 26 July 1564 is printed in Korrespondenz 1:1. In it, he thanks Albrecht for sending the
music by Orlando and explains that he has on that day sent back “the song with the forty-one
are now untraceable.) Maximilian therefore had a particular interest in such

gigantic musical works.
Extraordinary, clever, and apt the gift may have been, but it was neverthe-
less unsuccessful diplomatically. There is no evidence of Striggio’s Mass having
had any diplomatic success in Vienna. In Brno, the composer was unable to
organize a performance in front of the emperor; and Maximilian prevaricated
for the next twelve months over the question of the Medici royal title. The
matter was settled only nine years later, with a more effective gift: a donation
of 100,000 scudi. Ferdinand I had left behind enormous debts on his death in
1564, and by 1575 Maximilian badly needed both money and papal support
for his quest for the Polish crown. The new Grand Duke Francesco sent Maxi-
milian money, and the emperor confirmed the title on 2 November 1575.72
Although the dates suggest a direct link between Cosimo’s hopes for an
imperially bestowed title and the presentation of the Mass to the emperor, they
do not imply anything about when the piece was first composed. It could
have been written somewhat earlier, for another occasion.73 At any time after
December 1565, Johanna could have told Francesco of her brother’s special
interest in collecting works in forty parts; she could have heard such a piece in
Florence (at her wedding?) or at some time during 1566, and could have sug-
gested sending the Mass to Maximilian.
Documentary evidence for some Florentine dimension to the work has not
yet come to light but it seems hardly possible that it was never heard by the
parts” (“dem gesang mit den 41 schtimen”). Bibl’s annotations (p. 2) refer to the correspondence
one month earlier and explain that “Maximilian had written to the duke on 26 June 1564 saying
that the Cardinal of Trent had sent him from Rome a composition with forty parts” (“M[aximil-
ian] hatte dem H[erzo]g am 26. Juni geschrieben, der Kardinal von Trient habe ihm aus Rom
eine Komposition mit 40 Stimmen geschickt”), and that Albrecht had replied that Orlando had
also written a good one and sent a copy (“do der Orlando was guts componiert hätte . . . , eine
Kopie zukommen zu lassen”). This earlier reference confirms that the Lassus piece mentioned by
Maximilian was in forty voices, not forty-one; Maximilian’s reference to “41 schtimen” thus im-
plies the presence of a Bassus ad organum part.
72. See Paula Sutter Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2001), 173–74. Lapini mentions that a splendid Mass was sung in the Duomo on Monday
13 February 1576 to celebrate the emperor’s ratification of the granducal title, but once again
does not record by whom the music was composed (Diario, 190).
73. Lapini records many festive occasions on which High Mass was sung with particular
solemnity in the Duomo. Among the most suggestive mentioned by him are: 11 June 1564,
Cosimo’s forty-fifth birthday and the transfer of domestic power to Francesco (Diario, 141);
22 March 1565, a celebration of the betrothal of Francesco and Johanna (142–43); and
18 December 1565, the nuptial Mass of Francesco and Johanna (150). Later dates when mass is
known to have been sung in a particularly solemn way are: 13 May 1568, in celebration of the
golden rose sent by the pope (158–59); 13 December 1569, in celebration of the title of Grand
Duke offered by the pope (165); 27 May 1571 (172–73); 23 October 1571, in celebration of the
victory at the Battle of Lepanto (173–74); 30 May 1574, Grand Duke Francesco’s induction as
Grand Master of San Stefano, in the presence of the papal nuncio (186); and 13 February 1576,
in celebration of Maximilian’s final recognition of the granducal title (190).
Medici themselves. Warren Kirkendale has shown that on occasions of partic-

ular importance court musicians could join those of the Duomo and also be
joined by the singers of the Baptistery. In general, musicians employed at one
church could be loaned to another for special occasions.74 Any Florentine per-
formance of the forty-part Mass would certainly have needed to draw on the
combined forces of musici ordinari and straordinari. The polyphonic choir of
the Baptistery had been reestablished by Cosimo in 1540, with twenty-three
singers, several of whom were actually paid by the Duomo (some payment
records suggest that they often performed in the Baptistery in the early morn-
ing, and then in the cathedral). Certainly, by the end of the century, the cathe-
dral relied substantially on the Baptistery to provide musicians. Some of the
court musicians were also employed at the cathedral. In 1567 the chapel mas-
ter of the Baptistery was Striggio’s senior colleague Francesco Corteccia, with
whom he had already collaborated on several big projects. The likelihood
remains therefore that the Mass, if heard in Florence, would have been per-
formed in either the Baptistery or the Duomo. (It may be noted, coinciden-
tally, that the medieval mosaics in the baptistery dome use an octagonal plan,
divided into forty panels, 5 x 8, comparable to the division of voices into five
eight-part choirs; the Baptistery mosaics include circles of eight, sixteen, and
twenty-four figures.)75
The Mass was not Striggio’s first composition in forty parts. In fact, he spe-
cialized in such works. Apart from his two identifiable surviving pieces (the
Mass and Ecce beatam lucem), three other well-known references to forty-part
compositions have been discussed in some detail by Fenlon, Keyte, and
Butchart.
On 13 July 1561,76 when Striggio was about twenty-four, a “canzona in
40 voices composed by Messer Alexandro Strigio” was performed in
honor of the visit to Florence of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este (1509–1572),
and was judged to be a “most beautiful thing.”77 (Fenlon and Keyte
74. “In addition to the court and its churches of S. Felicita, S. Lorenzo, . . . the major centers
of musical activity in Florence were the baptistery S. Giovanni and the cathedral S. Maria del
Fiore, administered and financed by the Arte dei mercantanti di Calimala and the Arte di lana re-
spectively, and two churches of major religious orders: SS. Annunziata of the Servites and S. Maria
Novella of the Dominicans. Only here existed the resources for regular performance of poly-
phonic liturgical music” (Kirkendale, Court Musicians, 643).
75. A similar plan was also used for the paintings in the cathedral dome, done by Vasari and
Zucci slightly later than Striggio’s Mass.
76. Not 12 July, as stated in Fenlon, “Striggio,” 577.
77. “On Sunday 13 July, at around 22 hours [about two hours before sunset, according to
Florentine time], the most reverend Cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d’Este, who was about sixty
years old, came to Florence and entered by the gate at S. Pier Gattolini; he was going as a legate
into France to work to quell, if possible, the heretical matters. A great number of clerics went out
in a procession to meet him, and they did him great honor. There were no fireworks, but a can-
zona in forty voices was sung, composed by messer Alexandro Strigio, musician to prince
Francesco, which was considered a most beautiful thing” (“A’ dí 13 di luglio, in domenica a ore
suggested this may have been the first performance of Ecce beatam
lucem, a proposal that has never yet been seriously challenged but that
remains somewhat problematic.)
A month later, on 21 August 1561, Striggio wrote to Guglielmo Gonzaga
in Mantua, stating: “Just at present I happen to have written a piece of
music for 40 voices, setting certain words in praise of Your Most Illustri-
ous Excellency and your most happy matrimony . . . nothing like it ever
having been heard for so many voices.”78 He enclosed the words and the
music but, as Fenlon notes, “neither has survived among the Gonzaga
papers.” Guglielmo’s marriage to Eleonora of Austria had taken place
four months earlier, on 26 April 1561. The music of the work enclosed
in August may therefore have been the “canzona” that had been per-
formed in Florence on 13 July, only five weeks earlier, but with a special
new text in praise of the earlier Mantuan wedding. The composer’s
statements that nothing like it had been heard before and that he had
just written it would then make sense and would imply that the piece “in
praise of ” the wedding had not actually been written for the ceremony
in April of that year. Striggio’s explicit statement that nothing like it had
been heard before for so many voices also allows us to conclude that the
forty-part Mass was composed some time between August 1561 and
December 1566, when he set out on his journey.
Nearly seven years later, on 22 February 1568, a “forty-part motet . . .
which was worthy of all honor and praise” was sung and played in
Munich, under Lassus’s direction, as part of the celebrations for the
marriage of Renée of Lorraine (1544–1602) and Prince Wilhelm of
Bavaria (1548–1626).79 Troiano’s well known description identifies the
composer as “Alessandro Striggio, Mantuan gentleman.”80 The work
was so successful that it was performed three times. (This is the occasion
22 in circa, venne et entrò in Firenze per la Porta a S. Pier Gattolini il reverendissimo Cardinal di
Ferrara, Ipolito di casa d’Esti, d’età di circa a 60 anni, che andava legato in Francia per operar di
sopire, se sarà possibile, le cose dell’eresie. Andògli incontro una gran parte del clero pricissional-
mente, e se gli ferno grandissimi onori; non si ferno fuochi, ma se gli cantò una canzona a 40 voci,
composta per messer Alexandro Strigio musico del principe Francesco, che fu tenuta cosa bellis-
sima”); Lapini, Diario, 132.
78. “al presente mi trovo haver fatto una Musica a quaranta vocj sopra a’ alcune parole fatte in
lode di vostra eccellenza Illustrissima et del suo felicissimo matrimonio . . . essendo cosa non mai
piu sentita in si gran numero” (Butchart, “Letters,” 14–15). See also Fenlon, Music and
Patronage, 87, and appendix II, document 24.
79. Not (as stated in Fenlon, “Striggio,” 575) Duke Albrecht IV, who died in 1550 and was
succeeded by his brother, Albrecht V. On the latter’s death in 1579, his son Prince Wilhelm, for
whose wedding the motet had been sung in 1568, became Duke Wilhelm V.
80. Wilhelm had been the Bavarian representative at the wedding of Francesco and Johanna,
arriving in Florence on 15 December 1565 (see Lapini, Diario, 148.)
with which Ecce beatam lucem had traditionally been associated until
Fenlon and Keyte proposed the speculative earlier date of July 1561, but
once again the association is unproven.81)
These three references, as has been noted, need not necessarily concern
three separate pieces of music; they might even relate to a single composition,
reworked for three different occasions. However, the identification of the
forty-part Mass sheds a glimmer of light on this point since the title Missa sopra
Ecco sì beato giorno suggests the existence of another such festive work, now
lost, that had an Italian text and was presumably in forty parts.82
There appears to be a Habsburg connection behind Striggio’s forty-part
pieces: one of his first such works was written in praise of the 1561 wedding
of the Duke of Mantua and Eleonora of Austria, a Habsburg archduchess;
another, described by Troiano, was performed at the 1568 wedding of Wil-
helm of Bavaria, the son of Anna of Austria, another Habsburg archduchess;
and the forty-part Mass was presented in January 1567 to Maximilian, the
Habsburg emperor (offered, incidentally, a few months before his fortieth
birthday). In these circumstances, it is remarkable that Striggio is not known
to have written any such grandiose work for the 1565 wedding of his own
master to yet another Habsburg archduchess, Johanna of Austria. If the festive
piece Ecco sì beato giorno on which the Mass was based was indeed a forty-part
work by him, then it could either have been identical with one of the uniden-
tifiable works performed in 1561 or 1568, or a reworking of one of those
works, or an entirely different work.
Ecco sì beato giorno may have been intended for performance in a sacra rap-
presentazione similar to the Rappresentazione dell’Annunziazione della gloriosa
Vergine (published Florence: Ceccherelli, 1566), performed on 10 March
1566 at the end of the ten weeks of festivities that followed the wedding of
Francesco and Johanna. Staged in the church of S. Spirito in the presence of
Cosimo, Francesco, and Johanna, it had several musical moments, including
the laude Diamo eterno a Dio lode, Justitia alta e pietate, and Nuovo canto al
Signor tutt’hor cantiamo. The final lauda was a setting of the words: O benedet-
to giorno / Ch’oggi riluce al mondo. . . .83 The Mass incipit Ecco sì beato giorno
(“Behold, such a blessed day”) parallels O benedetto giorno and may be the
81. Anthony F. Carver confidently claims (as do many scholars) that the 1568 work is
“doubtless” Ecce beatam lucem, despite the identification being problematic (Cori Spezzati, vol. 1,
The Development of Sacred Polychoral Music to the Time of Schütz [Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1988], 4).
82. It also opens up the new possibility that the unidentified wedding motet sung in Munich
might have been Ecco sì beato giorno.
83. See Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, ed., “Per un regale evento”: Spettacoli nuziali e opera
in musica alla corte dei Medici (Florence: Centro Di, for Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze
[2000]), 80–81 (no. 33).
opening words of a comparable text, possibly a lauda. It clearly relates to a cel-

ebration on a specific happy day, such as a wedding.84 One appropriate occa-
sion, in this context, could have been the wedding of Francesco and Giovanna
in 1565.
III. The “Striggio-Tallis Link” and “Heavenly Harmony”
The farthest stage of Striggio’s journey, his two weeks in England in June
1567, appears to have been added on his own initiative and for musical rea-
sons unconnected with the family links of his employers. It has been known
for some years that in the letter to Francesco de’ Medici of 18 May 1567
Striggio also asked to extend his leave of absence. “I have thought that, with
the good grace and permission of Your Most Illustrious Excellency, now that
I am near England, a week’s journey away, I would go and visit that kingdom
and the virtuosos in the profession of music that there are there. I make no
design of remaining there more than ten days, and immediately afterwards
I will return by the shortest and fastest route to Italy, to Mantua, and to
Florence.”85 A letter from later that year (20 August 1567, written in Milan)
confirms not only that he went and was able to meet Queen Elizabeth, but
also that his route home had been “by way of Flanders and France” (a point
returned to below, in the Appendix). Butchart notes that Elizabethan docu-
ments provide no precise confirmation of Striggio’s visit or of his contacts with
the English “virtuosos,” although a madrigal by him eulogizing Queen
Elizabeth survives.86 No known document mentions the forty-part Mass in
this connection, but one musician he must surely have met was the most emi-
84. I am grateful to the anonymous JAMS reader who kindly pointed out that Ecco sì beato
giorno “was presumably a lauda or similar setting given that the incipit is an ottonario (a madrigal
would, of course, be in settenari / endecasillabi).”
85. “Ho pensato, co’ bona gratia et licentia dell’eccellentia vostra Illustrissima, hora ch’io
sono vicino a l’ingalterra, a’ otto giornate di andare a vedere quel Regno et quelli virtuosi che vi
sono nella proffessione della musica. La dove no’ fo disegno di afermarmivi piu di Diecj giornj et
subito per la piu breve et spedita me ne ritornaro in Italia a Mantova et a fiorenza” (see Butchart,
“Letters,” 25–26, which includes a facsimile of the letter).
86. D’ogni gratia et d’amor, published four years later in the second book of madrigals for six
voices (Venice: Scotto, 1571). Striggio’s reputation in England remained high. One of his six-
voiced madrigals from the same collection, Non rumor di tamburi appears as Love Hath Pro-
claimed War by Trumpet Sounded in Thomas Watson’s The First Sett, of Italian Madrigals
Englished (London: Este, 1590). A particularly complex passage in multiple proportions, taken
from “Alexandro Striggio in the end of the 30th song of the Seconde booke of his Madrigals to
five voyces” [1570], that is, All’acqua sagra, is cited (and printed “in partition”) with admiration
by Thomas Morley in A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (London: Short,
1597; facsimile ed., Westmead, UK: Gregg International, 1971), 35. (The point is interesting for
stressing in England not only Striggio’s notational virtuosity but also his learnedness and his at-
tentiveness to the words.) Kerman noted that Non rumor di tamburi (1571) is also cited in
Thomas Weelkes’s madrigal Like Two Proud Armies (1600), and that Farmer’s Take Time While
nent of all the English “virtuosos in the profession of music” at that time:
Thomas Tallis.87
During the last forty years there has been much scholarly debate concern-
ing not only the events or musical models that might have spurred Tallis to
compose his forty-part “songe,” but also who might have commissioned it.88
The Commonplace Book of Thomas Wateridge, a law student at the Temple
in London, includes a highly suggestive anecdote dating from 27 November
1611.89
Time Doth Last (1599) may be modeled on Striggio’s Ahi dispietato Amor (1571); see Joseph
Kerman, The Elizabethan Madrigal: A Comparative Study (New York: American Musicological
Society, 1962), 231 and 251.
87. See Butchart “Musical Journey,” 10–11, and 11n25.
88. For the possible connection with the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–1558), based on the
text from the Book of Judith, see Daniel Page, “Uniform and Catholic: Church Music in the
Reign of Mary Tudor (1553–1558)” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1996). Most scholars have
agreed with Paul Doe that the work is probably Elizabethan. Concerning a possible connection
with Elizabeth I’s fortieth birthday in 1573, see Paul Doe, “Tallis’s Spem in alium and the
Elizabethan Respond-Motet,” Music and Letters 51 (1970): 1–14; and idem, Tallis, 2nd ed.
(London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 41. Concerning its supposed possible link with a men-
tion in the 1558/59 royal household accounts (“In bonis Thomas Talys . . . 40li”), see Denis
Stevens, “Tallis, Thomas,” in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume
(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1966) vol. 13, col. 69. Stevens retracts this idea in “A songe of fortie partes,
made by Mr. Tallys,” Early Music 10 (1982): 179, where he offers the alternative idea that the first
performance took place “perhaps during the summer months of 1571.” For the possible signifi-
cance of the work’s duration of 69 longs—“69 being a cryptogram for TALLIS (19+1+11+11
+9+18), using the numbering of the Latin alphabet”—see Hugh Keyte, “Hugh Keyte Replies,”
Early Music 9 (1981): 345; and idem, Disc notes for “Spem in alium,” 9–12. For the possible link
with the four galleries in the octagonal banqueting hall of Nonsuch Palace, see John Milsom,
“English Polyphonic Style in Transition: A Study of the Sacred Music of Thomas Tallis” (DPhil
thesis, University of Oxford, 1983).
89. See Elizabeth Roche, “Tallis’s 40-Part Motet,” letter to The Musical Times 122, no. 1656
(February 1981): 85; and Ralph Leavis, “Tallis’s 40-Part Motet,” letter to The Musical Times 122,
no. 1658 (April 1981): 230. Roche noted that the Wateridge document was first published in
Rev. H. Fleetwood Sheppard, “Tallis and His Song of Forty Parts,” Musical Times 19, no. 420
(February 1878): 97–98. (This was a letter to the editor dated 17 January 1878.) I am grateful to
Richard Andrewes, Head of Music, Cambridge University Library, for the following information
about Wateridge’s book. It is now housed in the Manuscript Department of the Cambridge Uni-
versity Library (shelf number MS.Dd.5.14). The anecdote concerning Tallis’s forty-part motet is
on fol. 73v, in a section of the manuscript that starts on fol. 70, under the heading “Ioco seria. Of
Divers sub[jec]ts.” It is a series of anecdotes, and the date, place, and teller of each anecdote
are usually noted. The Tallis story is annotated “[Told] By Ellis Swayne at my Chamber ye
27 Novemb. 1611.” The telling of this anecdote was linked with a discussion of a performance of
Spem on the occasion of the investiture as Prince of Wales of King James I’s son, Prince Henry,
one year earlier, on 4 June 1610. Spem was again performed for the investiture of Prince Charles
(4 November 1616). On both occasions it had been adapted to English words: “Sing and glorify
heaven’s high majesty, author of this blessed harmony; sound divine praises with melodious graces.
This is the day, holy day, happy day; for ever give it greeting, love and joy, heart and voice meeting.
Live Henry [Charles] princely and mighty, Henry [Charles] live in thy creation happy.” (The
phrase “This is the day, holy day, happy day” is a curious echo of Striggio’s Ecco sì beato giorno.)
In Queen Elizabeth’s time yere was a songe sen[t] into England of

30 parts (whence ye Italians obteyned ye name to be called Apices of ye
world) wch beeinge songe mad[e] a heavenly Harmony. The Duke of
_____ bearinge a great love to Musicke asked whether none of our
Englishmen could sett as good a songe, and Tallice beinge very skilfull
was felt to try whether he could undertake ye Matter, wch was songe in
the longe gallery at Arundel house wch so farre surpassed ye other that
the Duke hearinge of yt songe, took his chayne of Gold from of [f ] his
necke and putt yt about Tallice his necke and gave yt him (wche songe
was againe songe at ye Princes coronation).
Scholars have tended to assume that Wateridge’s “30 parts” could be a mis-
take for “40 parts,” and there is little reason to disagree, at least until an Italian
work of the right date and in thirty parts turns up.90 It has also been assumed,
more specifically, that the Italian work mentioned must have been Striggio’s
forty-part motet, despite the fact that there is no evidence at all connecting
Ecce beatam lucem with his 1567 trip.
The Wateridge anecdote is interesting for confirming that Italian art was
considered by some English people to be at the apex, and hence that Italian
musicians were the “Apices,” the height of perfection and a model for every-
one else. It also suggests that the sponsor of the original event was a patriotic
aristocratic English patron of Italian music; who else could have gone to the
enormous effort and cost of organizing a performance of such a gigantic
Italian work? The Rev. H. Fleetwood Sheppard identified the man behind
the Spem commission as Thomas Howard (1535/36–1572), the Duke of
Norfolk, but Wateridge’s reference to the Long Gallery at Arundel House
brings another aristocrat into the picture as possibly having been behind the
performance of the original Italian work: Thomas Howard’s father-in-law,
Henry FitzAlan (ca. 1511–1580), the twelfth Earl of Arundel. Both Norfolk
and Arundel were staunch Roman Catholics, but Arundel was considered the
leader of the English Catholics at the time.91 He had held high office under
Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I. Under Elizabeth, he
was Privy Councillor and Lord Steward of the Realm. In 1560 he had come
90. Tallis’s death in 1585 precludes the Italian work from having been Cristofano Malvezzi’s
thirty-part madrigal O fortunato giorno, composed for 1589 and printed in 1591, which is anyway
not in fact in thirty real contrapuntal parts, but only in six that are distributed through the thirty
printed parts. Although the possibility remains that the original Italian work that was “sent” was
indeed in thirty parts and had nothing to do with Striggio’s 1567 visit, the link with Striggio
seems likely, on circumstantial grounds. The choice of “thirty” could also have been a deliberate
obfuscation designed to imply the greater importance of the forty-part English achievement.
91. The Duke’s younger brother was Henry Howard (1540–1614), later created Earl of
Northampton, who in 1605 was the dedicatee of the first volume of William Byrd’s Gradualia.
His son Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, died in the Tower of London in 1595; in 1970 he was
canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as a saint and martyr.
to blows with Lord Clinton, in the Queen’s presence, concerning the perse-
cution of Catholics.
Even more pertinent to Striggio’s setting of the Ordinary of the Mass is the
fact that Arundel was in Italy in 1566. He had resigned his court office in
1564. A letter by Francis Allen dated 14 December 1565, states “My Lorde
of Arundell meaneth now, at the sprynge, for the better recoverye of his
helthe, to go into Italie.” He was away for fourteen months, leaving in the
spring of 1566, apparently because “he fell to the extreme disease of the
gowte, wherby he was forced for remedye to seke the baynes about Padwaye”
(a reference to taking the baths at the Terme di Montegrotto near Padua). While
in Italy, “his greate intertainment which he received of foren Princes was much
to be noted; they used him not in sorte of an ordinary nobleman, but with the
greatest honour and solemnity, as to a personage of highe credit.”92
Arundel arrived back in London on 17 April 1567, about two months
before Striggio’s own arrival in England. It is improbable that Striggio would
have stopped in Padua between Mantua and Innsbruck on his journey to
Vienna in December of that year, and it is not known whether Arundel had
visited Florence in 1566. On the other hand, his return trip to England could
certainly have taken him through Paris and the dates allow for the two men to
have overlapped there at the beginning of April 1567. Such a meeting at such
a time would explain why in Striggio’s letter of 3 March, written just before
he went to France, he specifically states that he intends to return to Florence
directly, whereas in his letter of 18 May, written from France, he requests an
extension to his leave of absence in order to go to England.
In 1556 FitzAlan had bought England’s greatest Renaissance building, the
fabled Nonsuch Palace.93 His London home, Arundel House, was just off the
Strand. Arundel was the patron of Petruccio Ubaldini, the Florentine illumi-
nator and scholar who had settled in England in 1562, dedicating a volume to
Arundel (whom he called his “Maecenas”). In 1570 Arundel was also the ded-
icatee of Thomas Vautrollier’s Recueil du mellange d’Orlande de Lassus con-
tenant plusieurs chansons. His private musical establishment was the largest
outside of the court. He had a splendid music library containing much Italian
92. See Alfredo Obertello, “Villanelle e madrigali inediti in Inghilterra,” Italian Studies 3
(1947): 101; and John Ward, “Music for A Handefull of Pleasant Delites,” this Journal 10
(1957): 164. A manuscript life of Arundel, probably written by someone in his inner circle, sur-
vives in the British Library (Royal MSS 17. A. IX), but includes no additional relevant information
on his journey. For further information on Arundel, see Andrew L. Boyle, “Henry Fitzalan,
twelfth Earl of Arundel: Politics and Culture in the Tudor Nobility” (DPhil thesis, University of
Oxford, 2002).
93. The building was started in 1538 by Henry VIII. Mary Tudor sold it to Arundel. On his
death it passed to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, and then back to the crown in 1592. In 1670,
Charles II gave it to one of his mistresses, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, who had it
pulled down in 1682.
music, including a manuscript book of madrigals he received in 1568 that had

been dedicated to him by the Ferrarese composer Innocenzio Alberti.94 The
earliest documented source for Spem in alium (now lost) was a manuscript in
the Nonsuch library, cataloged in 1596.95
Butchart commented that it was “unlikely that such a Mass could have been
sung officially in Elizabeth’s Protestant realm. But it may at least have been
examined by Tallis (a nominal Catholic) and others and have given Tallis some
notion of composition laid out on such a grand scale.” The key word here is
“officially.” It is a big jump from agreeing that it is unlikely that the Latin Mass
text for the Roman rite could have officially been sung liturgically to conclud-
ing that Tallis could only have “examined” it on paper, an almost impossible
task if Striggio was traveling with a set of partbooks. Even at the Catholic
French court the forty-part Mass had been heard in a nonliturgical context. Is
it so hard to imagine that such an exceptional piece could have been performed
and appreciated nonliturgically in London, in a comparable context? The Mass
could have been heard privately in the home of England’s leading Roman
Catholic aristocrat, with Arundel playing the part that had been played at the
Château de Saint-Maur by Louis de Gonzague. At a private event in his own
house, Arundel would not have been offended by the Latin words of the
Catholic Ordinary.96 In any case, whatever the great Italian work was that was
heard in London, it was clearly admirable. It had not merely been “examined,”
but actually been sung and had “made a heavenly Harmony.” There is there-
94. London, British Library, Roy. App. 36–40. See Joseph Kerman, “An Elizabethan Edition
of Lassus,” Acta musicologica 27 (1955): 71; and Obertello, “Villanelle,” 97–145.
95. See Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson, The Lumley Library: The Catalogue of 1609
(London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), 14; and Stevens, “A songe,” 175.
96. But even if that were a problem, if the text might have offended some official sensibilities,
in a sensitive situation the musicians could have hidden the embarrassing papist text by adding the
necessary musical fig leaf. By “solfyng,” they could have substituted solmisation syllables and
turned the work into a “solfaing song,” a practice confirmed by English manuscripts of the period
and attested by the existence of textless pieces by Mundy and by Tallis himself bearing this title.
See British Library Add. 31390: A booke of In nomines + other solfainge songes of v: vi: vii: & viii pts
for voyces or Instrumentes (dated three times 1578, but as Joseph Kerman has pointed out, most of
the contents need not date from later than 1567–68 (“Byrd’s Motets: Chronology and Canon,”
this Journal 14 (1961): 359–82). The Solfinge songe by Tallis (the attribution is not certain) sur-
vives in this and other manuscripts. An incomplete Solfinge Song by William Mundy also survives.
See Warwick Edwards, “The Performance of Ensemble Music in Elizabethan England,”
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 97 (1970): 116. Bernarr Rainbow notes: “Early use
of the English term ‘solfyng’ was relatively widespread.” It is apparently found, for example, in
the preface to Sternhold and Hopkins’s Whole Booke of Psalmes (editions of 1572 to 1631);
see Bernarr Rainbow, “Sol-Fa,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed.
(1980), 23:638–39. The Elizabethan practice of singing vocal music without the words is also
clearly referred to by Thomas Morley: “I say that all musicke for voices . . . is made either for a dit-
tie or without a dittie. . . . But I see not what passions or motions it [a motet] can stirre up, being
sung as most men doe commonlie sing it: that is, leaving out the dittie and singing onely the bare
note, as it were a musicke made onlie for instruments” (Morley, Introduction, 179).
fore little justification for assuming that Tallis’s “songe of fortie partes” could
not have been inspired by an English performance of Striggio’s forty-part
Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno in June 1567.
IV. Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, in cinque Corri

divisa and Ecce beatam lucem
The Mass’s subtitle announces that it is “divided into five choirs.” Being in
Italian in the French source, this subtitle is likely to derive from Striggio him-
self. Each of the choirs (here referred to as I–V) has eight voices, SATB, SATB.
During the Kyrie, Striggio increases the sonorities progressively but avoids
using the full complement of forty parts.
Kyrie eleison a8 (I)
Christe eleison a16 (II + III)
Kyrie eleison a24 (III + IV + V)
Liturgically, the Gloria immediately follows this, and therefore the first appear-
ance of forty parts at the words “Glorificamus te, gratias agimus propter ma-
gnam gloriam tuam” forms the climax to a general crescendo that was built up
across the Kyrie. Example 1 shows the beginning of the Gloria, in which two
passages have the most reduced forces (four parts) found anywhere in the
Mass, in preparation for the first forty-part sonorities. The opening words, “et
in terra pax hominibus,” are set for only four voices (Ia) but the texture
expands at measure 4 (“bonae voluntatis”) to the full eight voices of choir I.
This introduces a series of phrases from choirs I, V, II, IV, ending with again
only four voices (IVa) at “Adoramus te,” before the five double choirs join
together for the first time at “Glorificamus te” (m. 13).97
I have not been able to identify any work with the words Ecco sì beato giorno
on which the Mass was based. Certain aspects of the Gloria as it stands are curi-
ous. There are places where the same music is repeated to different words (the
music for the first “miserere nobis” is heard again at “suscipe deprecationem
97. In the Gloria, the other main passages in forty voices are “Domine fili,” “Jesu Christe”
(both statements with virtually the same music), and “Amen.” The rest of the texture is varied,
with passages in thirty-two voices (choirs I, II, IV, V: the first “miserere nobis” and “suscipe de-
precationem nostram”), in twenty-four voices (I, II, III: “Qui sedes ad dexteram patris”; III, IV,
V: “in gloria dei patris”), and in sixteen voices (I, II: “Quoniam tu solus sanctus” and “cum sancto
spiritu”; IV, V: “tu solus altissimus”). Short phrases in eight voices are heard from all the choirs (I:
“bonae voluntatis”; V: “Laudamus te”; II: “Benedicimus te”; I: “fili unigenite,” “Domine deus”;
V: “Domine deus”; II: “Agnus dei”; IV: “filius patris”; III: “qui tollis peccata mundi” twice, “tu
solus dominus.” The two moments in four voices are the carefully placed passages mentioned
above: at the very opening (Ia: “Et in terra pax hominibus”) and just before the first section in
forty voices (IVa: “Adoramus te”). One passage adopts a more subtle approach to the scoring:
“Domine deus rex celestis,” set for twenty-four voices, with only the six lower voices of choirs
II–V, omitting both superius parts in each choir.
Example 1 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, opening of Gloria
CHORUS I (a8)
[Ec - co sı̀ be - a - to gior - no, ec - co
$
Š ‡ ÐÐ ýý ð ðð ðð ýý ŁŁ ðð ðÐ ² Ð ð Ł Ł ð ð
ðð ð ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł Ł ð ð
Et in ter - ra pax ho - mi - ni - bus bo - nae
Ý ÐÐ ýý ð ðð ðð ² ðð ýý ŁŁ ² ðð ðð ÐÐ ðÐý Ł ð ðŁ Ł
% ‡ ð
$ ô ô ô
Š‡ ÐÐ ýý ðð
bo - nae
Ý Ðý ð
ô ô ô ð
% ‡ Ðý
âý ä CHORUS V (a8)
5 sı̀ be - a - to gior - no]
$ ðð ÐÐ Ð ÐÐ Ð
Š ðð ²Ð Ð ÐÐ
vo
- lun - ta
ý Ł ð- tis. Lau - da
Ðý
- mus
Ł
Ý ð Ł Łð ý Ł Ð ² Ł Ðð ð ÐÐ ð Ð ² ðð
%
$ Ðý
Š ðð ðð ÐÐ ² ÐÐ Ð ð
Ð ð ð Ð
vo - lun - ta - tis. Lau - da - mus
ð ²Ð Ð
Ý ðð ð Ð ÐÐ ÐÐ ÐÐ
% Ð
CHORUS II (a8)
$8 Ðð ð ðð ðŁ ý Ł Ð Ð ð
Š ðð ²Ł ð Ð Ðý ðð
te. Be - ne - di - ci - mus te. Ad -
ðð ýý ŁŁ ÐÐ ÐÐ ðð
Ý ðð ÐÐ ðð ðð
%
$ ð Ð
Š½ ÐÐ ð
ð ² ðŁ ýý Ł ð Ł Ðð Ł ý ¦Ł ðý ð Ð ŁŁ ð

te. Be - ne - di - ci - mus te.
ÐÐ ðŁ Ł Łð ý ð Łý Ð Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ŁŁŁŁŁ
Łý Ð Ł Ł Ł ð
Ýð Ł Ð
% ð
JExample 1 continued
CHORUS I, II, III, IV, V (a40)
11 CHORUS IV (a8) (reduced scoring)
$ ()
8 ÞÞ
Š ðð ðð ý ð Ł ðð ðð ðŁ Ł ðÐ ð ÞÞŁ Ł Ł Ł Ð
Þ Ð
- o - ra - mus te. Glo -
ð ðð ÐÐ ÐÐ ÐÐ ÞÞÞ
Ý ð
%
$
Š ô ô ÞÞÞ
ÞÐý ð
Glo -
Ðý ð
Ý ô ô
% Þ
$14 Ð ýý Ł ð ðð ðð ÐÐ
Š ÐÐ ý Ł ŁŁŁ ðŁ
ð ð Ł ðð Ł ðð
ð
ðð
ð
ÐÐ
Ð
-ri - fi - ca - mus te. (etc.)
ðý Ł Ł ŁŁ Ł ŁŁ ŁŁý Łðð Ł ŁŁ Ł Łð Ł ŁŁð ŁŁ ŁŁÐ Ł Ł ŁŁ
Ý Ð½ Łý Ł
% ¼
$ Ðý
Š ð½ Ł ð Ł ððŁ Ł ¼ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ð
Ðý Ł Ł
Ł Ł ð ð ð Ð
-ri - fi - ca - mus te. (etc.)
ŁÐ ý ŁŁ ŁŁ
Ý ŁŁ ð ðð ðð ðð ÐÐ
Ð ðð
% Ð ýý ð ð Ð
nostram”), and others where the same words are repeated to different music
(“miserere nobis”). Such features would be compatible with the hypothesis
that this movement might be a contrafactum.
A reconstruction of the first phrase of a hypothetical Italian original could
easily be made if voices 1–4 were to sing “Ecco sì beato giorno” during the
first three measures, and repeat these words as voices 5–8 enter during the next
three measures (as implied by the harmonic pattern, imitating that of the
opening four voices). The only modification this would entail would be for the
voices to repeat at measure 5 the dotted rhythms of measure 2 (as necessary)—
a logical and simple modification to fit the four syllables of “sì beato.” (See the
italic text above the opening six measures in Example 1.)
The problem with such an attempt to reconstruct a musical incipit for Ecco
sì beato giorno from the opening of the Gloria is linked to the fact that the two
opening musical phrases of the movement (despite being a setting of the nine-
syllable phrase “et in terra pax hominibus” and the six-syllable phrase “bonae
voluntatis”) can easily be made to fit any ottonario in iambic meter with the
traditional stresses on the third and the penultimate syllables. The words
“Ecco sì beato giorno” certainly fit this scheme, but the Gloria could also be
a contrafactum of any other piece starting with a standard ottonario.
The problem is compounded when we turn to the Credo, an even more
substantial piece of over 140 breves. This movement is slightly longer than
Ecce beatam lucem and comparable in length to Spem in alium. Here again,
aspects of the word setting are somewhat perplexing, suggesting that it might
also be a contrafactum, but the opening phrase as it stands (being a setting of
the seven-syllable phrase “patrem omnipotentem”) seems perfectly designed
for a settenario rather than an ottonario. However, a satisfactory reconstruction
suitable for the words “Ecco sì beato giorno” could similarly be provided by
dividing the initial note into two notes (presumably with a dotted rhythm; see
Example 2, and the italic text above the staves).
The matter appears to be settled, but in an unsettling way, by the use at the
very opening of the Credo of a short musical citation from near the opening
of Striggio’s forty-part motet Ecce beatam lucem. Measures 1–2 of Example 2
(from the Mass, sung by choir V in eight voices) are the same as measures 3–4
of Example 3 (from the motet, where the same music is also sung by choir V,
but in ten voices, with the two additional voices coming from choir IV).98 Did
Ecce beatam lucem exist in another version with the Italian text Ecco sì beato
giorno? If so, was the music of this Italian version substantially different, and
which version came first? Other links exist between the Mass and Ecce beatam
lucem: as discussed below, their clefs are identical for all forty voices, and they
share the same G-Mixolydian modality (also used for Spem in alium).99
It is disturbing that the musical rhythms of the Credo passage correspond
not to the Italian text mentioned in the Mass’s title but to the incipit of the
Latin motet. No rhythmic alteration is necessary to accommodate the Latin
text since the seven syllables of the opening phrase of the Credo (“Patrem
omnipotentem”) are an exact fit for “Ecce beatam lucem,” unlike the eight
syllables of “Ecco sì beato giorno.” Three other niggling points also raise
questions: the shared musical phrase is not quite identical in the motet and the
98. I confess it took me some time to notice this connection, despite Iain Fenlon’s canny
comment: “As to Ecco sì beato giorno, is it possible that this is the original Italian text of what then
becomes Ecce beatam lucem? They are not that far apart allowing for ‘lucem’ to be a metaphorical
equivalent of ‘day’ ” (private communication).
99. Bass low G to soprano high G is an obvious three-octave range for such a piece, making
G-Mixolydian an easy choice, but not the only one; Rossetto’s Consolamini popule meus is in F
and has a range that is a fourth wider since the bass parts go right down to low D below the bass
staff, while the highest note is still soprano high G.
Mass (and the broad strokes required for forty-part composition make such
differences strange); the music at the very start of the motet (mm. 1–2) does
not occur at the opening of the Credo, and is not found anywhere in it; and
the motet and the Credo continue in completely different ways.
Despite the tempting idea that “lucem” (“light”) might be read as a meta-
phor for “giorno” (“day”), it would be rash to conclude that the title Missa
sopra Ecco sì beato giorno can be taken implicitly to mean “Mass on Ecce bea-
tam lucem” or that the link between Striggio’s two surviving forty-part pieces
is an obvious and direct one. The motet and the Credo are conceptually quite
different. Although Ecce beatam lucem does have a few passages a8, a16, a24,
a32, and a40, it also has many more phrases in quite different groupings: a10
(eight times); a13 (five times); a11 and a14 (three times each); a9, a12, and
a20 (twice each); a15, a21, a22, and a25 (once each). By contrast, the Mass is
much more schematically “divided into five choirs” and the groupings are
almost always precisely by double choir, in exact multiples of eight voices. For
example, Table 2 shows the grouping of the voices in the Credo; every one of
them is an exact multiple of eight voices, and this is typical of the whole Mass.
The distribution of voices in the remaining movements confirms the break-
down into multiples of eight voices at all times (with the exception of the first
phrase of the Hosanna, in twelve parts). The apparent correlations between
the Mass and the motet Ecce beatam lucem—musical quotation, clefs, mode—
remain, for the moment, more intriguing than illuminating.
Ecce beatam lucem may also have been known under a different title. A ref-
erence in De Parodia (1611) by Georg Quitschreiber (1569–1638) provides
the curious information that the Lutheran scholar Johannes Lippius (1585–
1612) had reduced Striggio’s great motet to seven voices, but also gives
the title of the motet as “Ecce beatam lucem or Laudes Jehovae summi.”100 Did
100. “Also in the same way Magister Johannes Lippius of Strasburg has reduced the forty-
part song by Alessandro Striggio, Ecce beatam lucem etc., or Laudes Jehovae summi, etc., as a
Parodia in seven voices” (“Ita & M. Joan. Lippius Argentinensis, cantionem Alexandri Strygii 40.
V. Ecce beatam lucem &c. vel Laudes Jehovae summi &c. Parodià quadam in 7. voces redactâ,
publicè cecinit”); Georg Quitschreiber, De Parodia, tractatus musicalis musicae studiosis propositus
(Jena: Weidner, 1611). For the full text see Andreas Waczkat, “Ein ehrenhaftes Spielen mit Musik”:
Deutsche Parodiemessen des 17. Jahrhunderts (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), 201–7. See also Klaus
Wolfgang Niemöller, “Parodia-Imitatio: Zu Georg Quitschreibers Schrift von 1611,” in Studien
zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift für Ludwig Finscher, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal and Kara
Kusan-Windweh (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1995), 176. Niemöller noted that a copy of the Quit-
schreiber treatise (the only one known to him) is in the same library in Zwickau as the manuscript
of Ecce beatam lucem. (Another copy is in Lübeck). I am grateful to John Roberts for this infor-
mation and for drawing my attention to Quitschreiber’s reference to Lippius. The closing passage
in Lippius’s own treatise Synopsis musicae novae (Strasburg: Kiefer, 1612) refers to composing in
forty parts: “five-part writing and other polyphonic combinations that abound in perfection,
reaching up to forty, or even more melodies.” This is presumably an indirect reference to
Striggio’s original version of Ecce beatam lucem. See Johannes Lippius, Synopsis of New Music
(Synopsis Musicae Novae), trans. Benito V. Rivera (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Music
Press, 1977), 57.
J
Example 2 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, opening of Credo
CHORUS V (a8)
âý ä
[Ec - co sı̀ be - a - to gior - no
$ ð
Š ‡ ÐÐ ð
²ð
ðð ð ðŁ ð Ð
²Ł Ł ð ÐÐ
Pa - trem om - ni - po - ten - tem.
Ð ðð ý ð
Ý‡ Ð ð Ł Łð ð Ł ÐÐ ÐÐ
%
$ ð
Š‡Ð ðð ð ð ð Ð Ð
Ð ð Ł ð Ł Ł ð Ð
Pa - trem om - ni - po - ten - tem.
Ý Ð ð ðð ð ðð ÐÐ ÐÐ
% ‡Ð
CHORUS IV (a8)
âý ä
Ec - co sı̀ be - a - to gior - no.]
4
$ Ð ðð ð ð ð ÐÐ ð
ŠÐ ð ð ð ð
Pa - trem om - ni - po - ten - tem. (etc.)
½ ðð ÐÐ
ÝÐ ð ð ðð ð ð
%
$ Ð ð ð Ł ŁŁ ŁŁ Ł Ł ðð ðð
ŠÐ ðð ð Ł
ð Ł
Pa - trem om - ni - po - ten - tem. (etc.)
ÝÐ ð ðð ð ðð ÐÐ ðð
% Ð
different versions of the motet have three titles, two in Latin and one in
Italian?101 Did the original version go through two transformations, using the
same music for three different texts? Or was Laudes Jehovae summi the incipit
of the text for Lippius’s own seven-part parodia?
101. The second Latin title recalls the second phrase of the known text: “Ecce beatam lucem;
ecce bonum sempiternum. Vos, turba electa, celebrate Iehovam.” Given that “Laudes Jehovae
summi” has seven syllables, it is likely that it was the incipit of the text for Lippius’s parodia.
J
Example 3 Striggio, opening of Ecce beatam lucem
(a8) [CHORUS I]
$ ð
Š ‡ ÐÐ ðð ð
²ð
ðð Ł ð Ð
²Ł Ł ð
Ec - ce be - a - tam lu -
Ð ðð ð ðð Ł Ł Ł ð
Ý‡ Ð ð ð Ł Ð
%
$ ð
Š‡Ð ð
ð ðð ð Ð Ł Ł Ł
Ð ð ð ¼
Ec - ce be - a - tam lu -
Ý Ð ðð ð Łð Ł ðð ŁÐ Ł Ł Ł
% ‡Ð
$3 (a10)
Ð
[CHORUS V + 2vv]
ð ðð ð ðŁ ð Ð
ŠÐ ²ð ð ²Ł Ł ð ÞÐ
Ec - ce be - a - tam lu - cem (etc.)
-(cem)
Ð ð ðð ý ð ð ŁŁ Ł ðŁ ¼ Ł ÐŁ ð ðÐÐ ð
Ý Ðð Ł Łð ð Ł Ð Ł
%
$ ð
ŠÐ ðð ð ð ð Ð Þ
Ð ð Ł ð Ł Ł ð Þ
Ec - ce be - a - tam lu - cem (etc.)
-(cem)
Ý ÐÐ ðð ðð ô
ðð ðð ðÐ ð ÞÞ
% Ð ð ð
V. Strategies and Techniques of Composition in Forty Voices
This major work in forty voices inevitably raises the question “But how did
Striggio actually do it?” The answers to the question cover many areas, includ-
ing the implications of the clef groupings; the practicalities of positioning
singers and instrumentalists in performance; the use of melismatic or syllabic
styles; and the straightforward contrapuntal technicalities involved in writing
Table 2 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno. Distribution of Voices in the Credo.
(Sections a40 are shown in bold.)
Patrem omnipotentem, (twice) a8 (V; then IV)

factorem celi et terrae, a24 (I + II + III)
visibilium omnium a8 (V)
et invisibilium. a8 (I)
Et in unum Dominum a8 (II)
Jesum Christum, a16 (II + III)
filium Dei unigenitum a8 (IV)
et ex patre natum ante omnia secula. a16 (I + V)
Deum de Deo, a8 (II)
lumen de lumine, a16 (II + III)
Deum verum a24 (II + II + IV)
de Deo vero a40
genitum, non factum, consubstantialem patri: a8 (I)
per quem omnia facta sunt; a40
qui propter nos homines et propter nostram
salutem, descendit de celis, a8 (V)
et incarnatus est (four times) a8 (III; then II; then IV; then I)
de Spiritu Sancto a8 (III)
ex Maria virgine: a8 (II)
et homo factus est. a40
Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato,
passus et sepultus est, a8 (IV)
et resurrexit a40
tertia die secundum scripturas, a32 (I + II + III + V)
et ascendit in celum, sedet ad dexteram patris, a8 (IV)
et iterum venturus est a32 (I, II, III, V)
cum gloria, judicare vivos et mortuos;
cuius regni non erit finis. a8 (IV)
Et in Spiritum Sanctum, dominum et vivificantem, a16 (I + II)
qui ex patre filioque procedit, a16 (III + V)
qui cum patre et filio a40
simul adoratur a24 (I + II + IV)
et conglorificatur, a8 (III)
qui locutus est per prophetas. a8 (V)
Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam
ecclesiam, a40
ecclesiam. a16 (I + II)
Confiteor a40
unum baptisma a32 (II + III + IV + V)
in remissionem a40
peccatorum. a32 (II + III + IV + V)
Et expecto a40
resurrectionem, a8 (I)
resurrectionem a40
mortuorum, a8 (I)
mortuorum, a40
et vitam venturi seculi. Amen. a40
for so extravagant a number of voices. This last point also requires us to

consider the nature of the Bassus ad organum accompaniment. Each of these
points elicited from Striggio significant compositional decisions.
Clef groupings
As mentioned above, the clefs of the forty-part Mass are identical to the ones
found in Ecce beatam lucem.102 Since the Mass is explicitly described as being
“in cinque Corri divisa,” the motet’s problematic groupings into choirs should
now be subjected to new scrutiny.103 Table 3 shows the clef groups for both
Mass and motet. The first, third, and fifth double choirs mix subchoirs in
high clefs (G2/C2/C3/F3) and lower clefs 104 (C1/C3/C4/F4, shown in
bold for voices 5–8, 21–24, and 37–40), whereas the two intermediate dou-
ble choirs (II and IV) use only the high clefs. Striggio’s arrangement into five
double choirs has a symmetrical “A-B-A-B-A” format when viewed from the
point of view of the clefs, and presumably also, therefore, of the vocal forces
that performed the two works.
In the Mass, this grouping and this symmetry are confirmed by the twenty
extra voices in the last Agnus, where a more complex symmetry in sixty parts is
equally apparent. The first four additional parts are distributed among the
partbooks for choir I, the next four are found in the partbooks for choir II,
etc. The twenty new voices are thus added as five sets of four voices, with each
of the five double choirs being augmented by a third SATB subchoir in high
clefs. Table 4 shows how the third subchoir in each triple choir always has
the same clefs as the first subchoir, regardless of the partbook in which indivi-
dual added voices occur. (A bass partbook can have an extra part in the high
soprano G2 clef.) The “A-B-A-B-A” arrangement of the five main choirs re-
mains present, but within each of the triple choirs I, III, and V there is a fur-
ther internal symmetrical grouping of the three four-voice groups, in “a-b-a”
form (high, lower, high clefs). The result is that triple choirs I, III, and V have
the inner four voices in lower clefs (nos. 5–8, 29–32, and 53–56, shown in
bold), while choirs II and IV use a triple grouping of high clefs.
102. Carver erroneously gives the clef for voice 6 in the motet as C2 instead of C3 (Cori
Spezzati 1:76).
103. The traditional description of Ecce beatam lucem as being in four choirs of eight, ten, six-
teen and six voices is not convincing musically, despite this division into choirs being apparently
stated on the 1587 Zwickau parts (although not, as is often stated, in Troiano’s description of the
Munich 1568 motet). A more recent view of Ecce beatam lucem as being in “ten groups of four
voices” hardly does much to advance our understanding of the ways the voices are combined in
the motet (see Fenlon and Keyte, “Memorialls,” 331).
104. I use the term “lower” rather than “low” for these clefs, since an even lower set was also
not uncommon: C2/C4/F3/F5. For a recent discussion of the problem as it relates to slightly
later Italian vocal music, see Andrew Parrott, “Monteverdi: Onwards and Downwards,” Early
Music 32 (2004): 304–17, esp. 315n7.
Table 3 Clef Scheme (40 voices), Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale
de France, Rés. Vmd. ms 52 (olim Vm1 947), and Ecce beatam lucem (Zwickau, Ratsschul-
bibliothek, Mus. 109.1).
Voices Subchoir Clef groupings
I: FIRST DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

1–4 1st subchoir (a4) G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
5–8 2nd subchoir (a4) C1 / C3 / C4 / F4 = lower
II: SECOND DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

13–16 2nd subchoir (a4) G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
III: THIRD DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

IV: FOURTH DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

29–32 2nd subchoir (a4) G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
V: FIFTH DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

Further confirmation that these twenty added voices belong to their respec-
tive choirs, in groups of four, is found in the order of voices as they enter in
close stretto imitation in the closing Agnus. The voices come in one by one,
more or less in order, with the four voices of each new group entering with
one of the five main eight-part choirs. (See Ex. 4, below.) This progressive
entry of voices 1–60 is unlike any moment in Ecce beatam lucem.
Positioning of musicians
If the subtitle of the Mass illuminates the voice groupings of the motet,
similarly—assuming that the two works were indeed intended for comparable
sets of performers, as the clefs suggest—the physical placement of the mu-
sicians during a performance of the Mass may also be seen in the light of
information derived from the source of the motet. The organ bass part of Ecce
beatam lucem contains an annotation referring to the instruments supposed to
play the accompaniment and implying both that the singers were standing in a
circle and that the instruments were in the middle of that circle. The original
Italian, severely garbled by the German scribe of the Zwickau manuscript, was
apparently intended to mean the following: “Great bass derived from the low-
Table 4 Clef Scheme (second Agnus Dei), Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno (with a third subchoir
added to each double choir)
Voices Subchoir Found in partbooks Clef groupings
I: FIRST TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

1–4 1st subchoir (a4) 1 / 2 / 3 / 4a G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
5–8 2nd subchoir (a4) 5a / 6a / 7a / 8 C1 / C3 / C4 / F4 = lower
9–12 3rd subchoir (a4) 4b / 5b / 6b / 7b G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
II: SECOND TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

17–20 2nd subchoir (a4) 13a / 14 / 15a / 16a G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
III: THIRD TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

29–32 2nd subchoir (a4) 21a / 22 / 23a / 24a C1 / C3 / C4 / F4 = lower
IV: FOURTH TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

41–44 2nd subchoir (a4) 29a / 30a / 31a / 32 G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
V: FIFTH TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

49–52 1st subchoir (a4) 33 / 34 / 35 / 36 G2 / C2 / C3 / F3 = high
53–56 2nd subchoir (a4) 37a / 38a / 39a / 40a C1 / C3 / C4 / F4 = lower
est part of the 40, to be played in the middle of the circle with a [bass] sackbut,
no. 41 [the General Bass line], for sustaining the harmony, to be played with
Organ, Lute, & harpsichords or viols.”105
For both Striggio’s motet and his Mass, the extent to which we are dealing
with polychoral music for choirs that are significantly spatially separated is not
clear (although the Mass’s strict division into vocal forces by multiples of eight,
105. The original appears to read: “Bassone canato dalla parte più basce del. 40 Per / sona
nimerro delcircalo con un bronbone No. 41, / per sostenta mento della armonia per sona /
risicon Orgono Luilo & cimboli ouiole.” Fenlon and Keyte noted that Max Schneider had first
suggested in 1918 that this must be a misreading of Striggio’s original text and that the Italian had
probably been: “Bassone cavato dalla parte più basse [sic] del 40, per sonar in mezzo del circolo
con un trombone No. 41, per sostentamento della armonia per sonarsi con Organo, Liuto & cim-
bali o viole.” See Max Schneider, Die Anfänge des Basso Continuo und seiner Bezifferung (Leipzig:
Breitkopf & Härtel, 1918), 67–68. A facsimile of the full page in the Zwickau source is given in
Fenlon and Keyte, “Memorialls,” 333, but a much clearer one of the annotation is in Schneider
(between pages 67 and 68), although the page itself is there truncated.
corresponding to the division into “cinque Corri,” is not incompatible with

significant spatial separation). If the annotation in the Zwickau source can be
trusted, it suggests that the Mass might also have been performed with the
singers standing in a circle, with the battery of instruments playing the Bassus
ad organum placed in the middle of the circle. Fenlon and Keyte discussed
the problems of the circular arrangement and made the further suggestion that
the original Italian garbled by the Zwickau scribe might have referred to the
accompanimental instruments being “in mezzo del mezzocircolo,” with the
singers thus standing in a semicircle and the group of continuo instruments
positioned like the dot in a fermata sign.
Whether circle or semicircle, a physical proximity and possibly even conti-
guity of the groups seems to be implied by the music. In the Mass, choir I sings
alone on two important occasions: the opening Kyrie and the Benedictus
(both of which are complete movements). If all the singers were in a circle, was
choir I placed in the middle, in front of the listeners, with the others positioned
symmetrically around it and with the instruments for the Bassus ad organum
in the center? If so, it would imply that choirs I and V are adjacent, an effect
rarely exploited in the music. A more troubling problem is that the audience
would then presumably be positioned in the same space as the instruments
playing the Bassus ad organum. It would be bizarre to have the musicians in a
circle and the listeners outside that circle, creating music that exploits spatial
effects while at the same time excluding the listeners from that critically opti-
mal space.
If, on the other hand, the singers were in a semicircle, facing the listeners,
there would be two possibilities. Preserving the centrality of choir I that is
suggested by the music could imply the arrangement on the left:
II I III II III IV
IV B. ad O. group V I B. ad O. group V
Nevertheless, other aspects of the music suggest the more obvious arrange-
ment, with the five choirs positioned contiguously from left (I) to right (V),
as shown on the right. In this arrangement, the opening of the Gloria (see
Ex. 1) would acquire a compelling spatial logic of its own, starting with a
phrase on the extreme left (I), answered by one on the extreme right (V), then
center left (II), then center right (IV), before hearing III in the center with the
full complement of forty voices. Such effects are found throughout the Missa
sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, as are moments where III is pitted against the joined
forces of I, II, IV, and V. This position of the voices also seems implied by the
imitative opening of the second Agnus Dei; the sixty parts entering in more or
less correct numerical order from 1 to 60 would give an inexorable wave of
sound growing in the same direction (from left to right).
The famous opening of Spem, in which the forty parts come in progressively
from 1 to 40, in imitation, may be a deliberate reference to the way the sixty
voices of Striggio’s second Agnus Dei come in progressively from 1 to 60, in

imitation. Whereas Tallis’s opening paragraph brings in his forty parts using
two points of imitation (one for the first twenty voices, the other for the
remaining twenty, during which the first twenty progressively drop out),
Striggio’s Agnus Dei maintains a single triadic point, always rectus, bringing in
all sixty voices cumulatively within ten one-breve measures (on the minim
beats and the semiminim beats), and once all the voices are in, they remain
singing until the end of the twenty-six-breve movement. Each triple choir is
given its own harmony for the two measures during which its twelve voices
enter. This produces five opening harmonies (of two breves each) for the
full set of sixty vocal entries: C major (choir I), A minor (II), C major (III),
G major (IV), F major (V), as shown in Example 4.
Melismatic and syllabic styles

The polychoral divisions, outlined earlier in this article, also raise the question
of how the words are set in the different sections. At moments where the
words comprise easily recognizable short phrases, and the writing is in a mere
eight parts, Striggio employs imitative melismatic counterpoint (for example,
free imitation for “Kyrie eleison,” strict imitation for “Benedictus qui venit in
nomine Domini”). Florid nonchordal counterpoint in forty parts is also used
in places where the words are easy to understand, such as the joyous, jumbled
confusion of voices at “Hosanna in excelsis.”
By contrast, chordal declamation naturally occurs more frequently in the
Gloria and Credo. In this Striggio was following the homophonic and syllabic
approach that was becoming more or less standard at the time for these two
texts, although we should not forget that his Mass was written between
August 1561 and November 1566, before the appearance of the two key pub-
lications announcing the Roman Counter-Reformation agenda in terms of
Mass composition: Palestrina’s Missarum Liber Secundus (Rome: Dorico heirs,
1567), which contains the Missa Papae Marcelli; and Giovanni Animuccia’s
Missarum Liber Primus (Rome: Dorico heirs, 1567). By pitting choirs or
groups of choirs against each other (choir I against V, or II against IV),
Striggio often exploits the more or less extreme antiphonies.
Contrapuntal techniques
Specific techniques for writing in forty parts allow Striggio to achieve his
grandest textural effects. He generally divides the voices into those that do not
move melodically and those that do, mixing up these parts throughout the
texture in a varied way. For the melodically static voices, a C-major chord (for
example) has three basic triads, or nine pitches that are available between tenor
C and soprano high G (see Ex. 5a). Any voices that hold on to one of these
nine pitches without moving melodically can, of course, be doubled (or even
J
Example 4 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, Agnus Dei 2 (a60): Pitches and beats on
which voices 1–60 enter during the first ten measures
PRIMO CORO. C major triadic entries, each voice starting on:

$ 1 3 2 5 9 6
Š‡Ł Ł Ł Ł ÿ ½ Ł ¼ Ł ¼ ½
4 7 8 11Ł 12 10
Ł
Ý‡ÿ Ł Ł Ł Ł ½ ÿ
%
SECONDO CORO. A minor triadic entries, each voice starting on:
$3 13 14 15 18
½
21
½
17 23
ÿ
ŠŁ ¼ Ł Ł
Ł Ł Ł Ł
16 19 20 24 22
Ýÿ Ł Ł ½ ÿ
% Ł Ł ¼ Ł
TERZO CORO. C major triadic entries, each voice starting on:
$5 25Ł 26 27 29 30
Ł
33
Ł ô
Š Ł Ł Ł ¼ ¼
28 31 32 34
Ł 35
Ł 36
Ýÿ Ł ¼ Ł ¼ Ł Ł ÿ
%
QUARTO CORO. G major triadic entries, each voice starting on:
$7 37 42 38
ÿ
41 45
½ ÿ
ŠŁ ¼ Ł Ł
Ł Ł
43 39 47 40 48 44 46
Ý½ Ł Ł Ł Ł Ł ½ Ł Ł ÿ
% ¼
QUINTO CORO. F major triadic entries, each voice starting on:
$9 49 50
½
53 57 58
½ ÿ
ŠŁ ¼ Ł ¼ Ł Ł ¼ Ł
55 51 52 54 56 59 60
Ý Ł Ł Ł Ł ½ Ł Ł Ł ÿ
% ¼ ¼ ¼
tripled) without any contrapuntal danger: there is no risk of creating parallel

unisons, octaves, or fifths, as long as the parts remain melodically immobile
and as long as attention is paid to the arrival on these notes and the departure
from them. In tight spots, given the number of voices, problems can be fixed
by adding rests at the start or the end of the passage.
Zarlino, in 1558, did not really approve of contrapuntal salvation by rests.
In the case of composition in three or four parts, he severely states: “Some
believe it is not improper for two perfect consonances of the same species to
ascend or descend together without an intermediate consonance when a dis-
sonance or minim rest separates them. . . . They are deluding themselves.” But
by saying that such remedies should not be used “except in compositions for
many voices”106 he left the door open for salvation (or at least absolution) in
textures with a large number of voices.
As for the voices that do move melodically over a single sustained harmony,
contrapuntal success depends on having groups of voices that move triadically
on the main beats, moving at the same time in the same rhythm and outlining
the same triad in different but compatible ways. (See Exx. 5b–d.) The C-major
triad in its most simple rhythmic form, in semibreves, and in four
different melodic versions (C, E, G, E, C / G, E, C, E, G / E, G, E, C, E / or
E, C, E, G, E), is shown in Example 5b, in which the notes indicate simply the
crucial placement of the structural consonances. These are not all the possibili-
ties, even with the regular rhythm, since they involve only movement to adja-
cent notes in the triad. Other parts with the same rhythm and on the same
main beats (not shown in Ex. 5) could exploit nonadjacent notes, with inter-
vals of a fourth, a fifth, or an octave (C, C, G, C, C / G, G, C, G, G, etc).
Examples 5c and 5d show how for any given melodic or rhythmic version
of the triad the use of syncopation allows more voices to be added without any
danger of forbidden doublings. These same triadic lines are given at the same
speed but at two different levels of syncopation: on the minim beats (5c) and
on the semiminim beats (5d). Success here depends, therefore, on sufficiently
slowing down the harmonic rhythm (that is, it is easier when the Bassus ad
organum has longer notes, lasting two or three breves); this is a prerequisite
for putting in place the syncopations at different rhythmic levels. When such
voices are combined with the melodically static parts that have been doubled,
discussed above, these simple techniques can generate nearly thirty real parts
almost without any effort, over a static bass note. If the held notes are tripled,
almost forty parts automatically result.
A whole new set of possibilities appears when the basic triad is subjected to
rhythmic diminution. Examples 6b and 6c show the triad moving in minims
rather than breves, either on the minim beats (Ex. 6b) or syncopated onto the
semiminim beats (Ex. 6c). As an alternative in more vigorous textures, filling
in these intervals with passing notes between the pitches of the triads (Exx. 6d
106. “Sogliono alcuni non havere per inconveniente, il porre due Perfette Consonanze di una
istessa specie, l’una dopo l’altra nelle loro compositioni, che insieme ascendino, o discendino,
senza porui di mezo alcun’altra consonanza; percioche si avisano, che’l porre tra loro una
Dissonanza, o veramente une Pausa di minima. . . . Ma in vero quanto costoro s’inganno”; . . .
“se non nelle compositioni di più voci” (Gioseffo Zarlino, Le istitutioni harmoniche [Venice,
1558], part 3, chap. 47 [=chap. 48, p. 141 {recte 241} in the 1573 edition]; see Gioseffo Zarlino,
The Art of Counterpoint; Part Three of Le istitutioni harmoniche, 1558, trans. Guy A. Marco and
Claude V. Palisca [New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1968], 113).
Example 5 Schema for generating consonances in many parts
$ ðð ýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ

Š ‡ ðððð ýýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÿÿ
ý
a
Ý ðð ýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÿÿ
% ‡ ðý
$ Ð Ð Ð ÿ
Š ‡ ÐÐ Ð Ð Ð
ÐÐ ÿ
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Š ‡ ¼¼ ðð ðð ð Ł Ł ð ð ð Ł Ł ð
d
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%Š ‡ ¼ ð ð ð Ł Ł ð ð ð Ł ÿ
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and 6e), produces a great richness to the sonority. Striggio often gives such
lines, especially the more difficult syncopations on the semiminim beats, to the
tenors (adult singers), rather than to the high sopranos (presumably boys),
a pragmatic strategy. Not all of these new possibilities are contrapuntally
compatible with those shown in Example 5, but the significant points here are
(a) that a considerable number of choices were at Striggio’s disposal, (b) that
he had freedom to choose flexibly among them in a musically varied and inter-
esting way, and (c) that for the forty-part passages he had a basic choice to
make between movement at the slower speed of Example 5 and the more
urgent speed of Example 6, but that to mix the two could be contrapuntally
risky.
A texturally clearer sonority (Ex. 6f) results from using the same rhythms
as Examples 6d and 6e, but with the short note following the dot, the fusa
(eighth note), anticipating the next pitch rather than being a passing note
between beats. This produces arpeggios and is in effect an even further level
Example 6 Schema for generating consonances in many parts (continued)
$ ðð ýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ

Š ‡ ðððð ýýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ
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$ ð ð Ł Ł ð ð ð Ł Ł ð ¼
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c
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of syncopation; in other words, the melodic movement is still triadic but with
the contrapuntal and harmonic syncopation at the eighth-note level. This can
also be used starting on the beat (rather than, as shown in Example 6f, synco-
pated). Comparable features are behind various passages found in the Mass, as
well as in Ecce beatam lucem, and add considerable thickness and weight to the
forty-part texture. Sometimes Striggio over-eggs the pudding, perhaps, but
these techniques generate much of the musical excitement to the sonority.
All these techniques and strategies required clear intellectual planning but
are not especially complicated. They derive logically from certain basic rules of
how to write counterpoint above a plainsong. In 1558 Zarlino had outlined
the elements of such an approach (although only in three parts) in chapter 63
of the third part of Le istitutioni harmoniche. He was referring to a way of
composing close two-part canons above a plainsong cantus firmus, of the need
to write “the parts with the condition that one part follow the other, using the
same movements or steps, at the distance of a minim. . . . It must be observed
. . . that the principal part, the guide, must not move one step—that is, [the
interval of] a second—for then the consequent would necessarily form a dis-
sonant interval—also a second—with it.” Zarlino noted that “observing this,
and writing the parts smoothly” can produce music that is “both beautiful and
artful and is also very apt when properly composed.”107
In 1597, Morley described in greater detail similar sorts of syncopated writ-
ing. He wrote of minims “odded by a rest,” and referred to “driving waies”
that, above a cantus firmus, also use a syncopation technique that “driveth a
crotchet rest throughout a whole lesson all of minims.”108 And in 1667, ex-
actly a century after Striggio composed his Mass, Christopher Simpson sum-
marized a very similar contrapuntal trick in his discussion of writing triple
“driving canons” at the unison over long notes in the bass. He stripped them
down to their harmonic structure, without any melodic figuration, and
showed how a skilled contrapuntist can produce almost extempore such tight
syncopated canons, no matter how the bass line moves: by seconds, thirds,
fourths, or fifths, both up and down.109 If Zarlino’s, Morley’s, and Simpson’s
107. “che l’una conseguiti l’altra al modo detto, per li gradi, o movimenti istesi, per il tempo
di una Minima; . . . Et si dè osservare . . . che la parte principale, cioè la Guida non faccia movi-
mento alcuno di un grado, cioè di una Seconda: imperoche’l Consequente necessariamente ver-
rebbe ad esser distante da lei per uno intervallo dissonante; cioè per una Seconda.” “Il qual modo
non è veramente da sprezzare: perche è bello, & ingegnoso; & torna molto commodo, massima-
mente quando è composto con debiti modi” (Zarlino, Istitutioni [1558], chap. 63, p. 256; Art of
Counterpoint, 215–17). The passage was considerably expanded in the 1573 edition.
108. Morley, Introduction, 89–90.
109. Christopher Simpson, A Compendium of Practical Musick in Five Parts (London:
Godbid, 1667), 156–57, “Of Syncopated or Driving Canon.” He is not of course talking about
composition in forty parts, but of canons in three parts over a plainsong in the bass. The tech-
nique he demonstrates is so simple it could be improvised, or at the least composed very rapidly,
and certainly without hesitation.
various contrapuntal rules are applied to the parts written above a harmoni-
cally slow Bassus ad organum line (which is thus treated in effect as a cantus
firmus in the bass), they can produce the kind of close imitations where the
main consonances are usually a third apart, exactly as in the triadic passages
outlined in Examples 5 and 6. They can generate parts safely, in precisely the
kind of thickened texture that Striggio uses in forty parts.
However, the musical effect of these various dry techniques—melodically
static notes, different triadic motion, up to three different levels of syncopation
at the same time, long bass notes—could quickly pall. As outlined here in
schematic form, the generation of many parts is blunt and unimaginative. Yet
the harmonic prototypes shown in Examples 5 and 6 rarely correspond to
Striggio’s actual melodic lines in the forty-part sections, only to the melodic
and contrapuntal implications behind such lines. He rarely uses something as
bald as this (although the first Agnus Dei draws substantially on this approach).
Once the placement of the consonances had been determined, individual
musical life still needed to be injected into at least the more important of the
musical lines.
The rhythmic unisons shown in Example 5a, for example, give the impres-
sion that all these sustaining parts have the same rhythm, but Striggio in fact
rarely does this. Static parts, doubling a particular held pitch, can be given var-
ied rhythms (producing rhythmically heterophonic declamation). This not
only adds a semblance of individuality to these lines but also has a significant
effect on the complexity of the overall texture. And nonstatic parts, the ones
that move from consonance to consonance, can also be given some individu-
ality by using more rhythmically varied versions of these schematic patterns and
by filling them out with passing notes in different rhythms, in effect trans-
forming them into more florid counterpoint.
Simpson, at his most helpfully didactic since he was writing about “the con-
trivance of canon,” comments about one of his own reductive, harmonically
analytical schemata: “By this you see what Concords your Canon must move
into; your care being no more than to avoid the Consecution of Perfects of
the same kind, and to dispose your Parts (so much as you can) into different
Concords.”110 One hundred years earlier, and on a larger scale, Striggio’s
problem was essentially exactly the same—as were his solutions. Once the cor-
rect rhythmic and syncopated placement of all the concords was determined,
parts could be elaborated in more richly figured counterpoint, with different
rhythms and passing notes to give them individuality. Examples 5 and 6 indi-
cate how such analytical schemata could be devised to generate forty parts
without difficulty (although not without work); compositional imagination
would still be needed to turn each skeletal line into something less mechani-
cal. Striggio’s achievement was not a mere juggling of the cold contrapuntal
110. Ibid., 154–55.
possibilities shown here; the rhythmic complexities of his lines manage to com-
bine these various techniques in supple and unexpected manners within single
phrases. Further study of his various ways of doing this will in due course reveal
more about his compositional processes for such a work and the intellectual
principles behind them.
Bassus ad organum
Consideration of these features throws light back on the significance of the
harmonic bass line. Although the Bassus ad organum for Ecce beatam lucem
was described in the annotation to the 1587 Zwickau part as a “Great bass
derived from [cavato] the lowest part of the forty,” it must surely have been
part of the early conception of the work, not derived from it post facto. It would
have been an essential compositional tool for the passages in many parts, like
a grand cantus firmus in the bass, of the kind over which contrapuntal exer-
cises had been devised for centuries.
The first accompanimental instrument mentioned in the Zwickau source of
Ecce beatam lucem is a trombone. This probably refers to a bass sackbut in A,
similar to the Quart-Posaun and Quint-Posaun familiar to musicologists from
the supplement to Praetorius’s Syntagma.111 There is both documentary and
organological evidence that such foundation bass parts may have sounded at
sixteen-foot pitch. The lowest note of Rossetto’s Consolamini popule meus, D,
is used as a bass for B-flat-major chords. The range of the part suggests that a
Quint-Posaun could be appropriate. Yet whenever low C is required, the tenor
C is notated, creating an apparent second inversion chord since the voices sing
a G below this. The instrumental bass thus appears to require performance
sounding one octave lower than notated if 6/4 chords are to be avoided.
Rossetto’s motet may thus be the earliest bass line assuming 16-foot pitch.
Whether such a 16-foot foundation was provided by the organ or by a con-
trabass sackbut is unclear; perhaps one or the other, or both. Troiano refers to
a performance in 1568 of “a very sweet madrigal by Alessandro Striggio, with
six large tromboni, of which the Bass played an octave lower than the normal
ones.”112 Although Praetorius mentions that the octave sackbut was rarely
111. Michael Praetorius, Theatrum instrumentorum seu sciagraphia (Wolfenbüttel: Holwein,

1620), plate 8, illustrations 1 and 2.
112. “un dolcissimo madrigale d’Alessandro Striggio, con sei tromboni grossi, ch’il Basso va
otto voci piu basso de gli altri comuni” (Troiano, Dialoghi, 63). I am grateful to Peter Bassano for
further information about the contrabass trombone. One such instrument survives, by Georg
Nicolaus Oller (admittedly dating from 1639 and built in Stockholm); it is now on permanent
display in the Musikmuseet, Stockholm. A very similar instrument, called Octav-Posaun, is shown
in Praetorius’s Theatrum, plate 6, illustration 2. See also Keith McGowan, “The World of the
Early Sackbut Player: Flat or Round?” Early Music 22 (1994): 441–66.
encountered in earlier times, he adds that “years ago, this type was already in
use in some chapels.”113
The two organ partbooks for Striggio’s Mass provide important evidence
of the early use of such bass parts; a comparable part also survives for Spem in
alium, for which likewise no sixteenth-century source is known. Yet one also
survives for Rossetto’s Consolamini popule meus, whose source is certainly pre-
1583 (a date found elsewhere in the source; the music itself probably dates
from the mid-1560s). Even earlier, in 1564, the lost Lassus work in forty parts
had had, according to Albrecht V, a forty-first part, presumably also a Bassus
ad organum.114 Foundation instruments had been used regularly in large-scale
Florentine music since at least the 1540s and had become fairly normal by the
mid-1560s.115 There is therefore no need to conclude that since the sources
for Striggio’s Mass and Spem in alium are not sixteenth-century, their organ
basses might be early seventeenth-century accretions. Without them, the
feat of writing in forty parts would surely have been much harder to achieve.
There is good reason to conclude that they were an essential part of these
works’ conception.
All of which brings us back to the starting point of this article, Spem in alium.
Hugh Keyte asserted in 1989 that there can be “little doubt that it was indeed
Ecce beatam lucem which he [Striggio] brought [to London] and which Tallis
was moved to emulate, as Spem in alium contains an undoubted tribute to its
model: the massive tutti at the words ‘peccata hominum’ is shot through with
staggered C-major arpeggios, a striking device to be found in no other English
work but occurring several times in Striggio’s motet.”116 In fact, the Mass uses
versions of this same technique, and many others. Spem may contain a tribute
to Striggio’s compositional techniques, but not necessarily as found in Ecce
beatam lucem. Spem also uses the “driving odde” technique described above,
although more sparingly than Striggio used it in either the Mass or Ecce
beatam lucem. Tallis understood the technical problems and perhaps even
arrived at fairly similar conclusions and solutions as a result of his own logical
reflection.
113. “Und diese seynd in etlichen Capellen vor Jahren albereit im gebrauch gewesen”
(Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II, De Organographia Part I [Wolfenbüttel: Holwein,
1614/15], 32; trans. and ed. David Z. Crookes [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986], 43).
114. See note 71 above.
115. In Howard Mayer Brown’s words concerning Florentine music: “From 1548 on, foun-
dation instruments, and above all keyboards and lutes, came to be regular members of instrumen-
tal ensembles. . . . By 1565, keyboard instruments had begun to take their places regularly as a
part of larger ensembles, as proto-foundation instruments. . . . By 1565, in other words, the foun-
dation principle was approaching a state of equal importance to the consort principle” (Sixteenth-
Century Instrumentation, 79, 26, 80).
116. See Keyte, Disc notes for “Spem in alium,” 11.
Spem remains the finer work, justly loved and admired, as Philip Brett
noted, for its great sense of line, its astonishing harmonic rhetoric, rhythmic
pacing, and overall musical architecture.117 Rossetto’s Consolamini popule
meus, as far as can be judged from the thirty-two surviving parts, hardly
exploits the contrapuntal techniques outlined above (although they helpfully
suggest precisely how the missing eighteen “filler” parts can now be recon-
structed). Rossetto’s work has escaped notice by all but a very few musicolo-
gists and is not even mentioned in the New Grove article on him.118 As for Ecce
beatam lucem, despite its having achieved some notoriety about twenty-five
years ago, it has had difficulty working its way into the consciousness of schol-
ars and music lovers. With the reemergence of the extraordinary Missa sopra
Ecco sì beato giorno it is now time for Striggio’s monumental works to be sub-
jected to a more informed critical comparison with Tallis’s and Rossetto’s
works. As a result, his achievements will come to be better understood and
appreciated.
117. Brett, “Facing the Music,” 347–48.

118. James Haar, “Rossetto [Rossetti], Stefano,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 21:717–18. Nor is there any reference there to the lost O pax altorum
placida o concordia regum, the “carmen xxiiii vocibus” (thought to be four six-part choruses)
composed by Rossetto for the 1571 wedding of Archduke Charles (youngest brother of
Maximilian II) and Maria of Bavaria (daughter of Albrecht V and Anna of Bavaria). See Robert
Lindell, “The Wedding of Archduke Charles and Maria of Bavaria in 1571,” Early Music
18 (1990): 265.
Appendix Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno by Striggio / Strigio /

Strigeo / Struseo / Strusco
It is strange that Alessandro Striggio’s forty-part Mass setting should have
escaped notice by scholars of sixteenth-century music. In the early eighteenth
century the set of forty-two partbooks was part of the extraordinary library of
the composer Sébastien de Brossard (1655–1730). His collection, containing
nearly 1,000 volumes of Italian and French music (and books about music),
both printed and manuscript, had been collected over the forty-year period
1685–1724, was donated to Louis XV in 1726, and has attracted considerable
scholarly attention.
The old Bibliothèque nationale card catalogue correctly identifies the Mass
as being by Striggio and gives its full title. The relevant cards date from the
1930s.119 As for Écorcheville’s 1914 printed catalogue of early music in the
Bibliothèque nationale,120 it does not include the Mass under “Striggio,” as
we shall see, but the copy currently housed on the open shelves (usuels) of the
BnF music reading room includes under “Striggio” an annotation in pencil re-
ferring to the piece. More recently, it has even been correctly cited, briefly and
in passing, by French scholars working on seventeenth-century French music,
notably Yolande de Brossard and Laurent Guillo, who had access to this inter-
nal information at the BnF.121 Yet neither of them, concentrating respectively
on Sébastien de Brossard and the Parisian printer Robert Ballard, appears to
have realized that this major sixteenth-century Italian work was thought to be
lost, that it has an unusually rich historical and political significance on a
European scale, and that it, rather than Ecce beatam lucem, is almost certainly
linked to the origins of the iconic English work Spem in alium.122
119. According to Catherine Massip. No one at the BnF could identify the handwriting on
the card.
120. J. Écorcheville, Catalogue du fonds de musique ancienne de la Bibliothèque nationale,
vol. 8 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1914).
121. Yolande de Brossard, La collection Sébastien de Brossard, 1655–1730: Catalogue
(Département de la Musique, Rés. Vm.8 20) (Paris: BnF, 1994), 424, no. 713. The same author
refers briefly to the Mass in “Sébastien de Brossard: Un aperçu des œuvres qu’il fit exécuter à
Strasbourg et à Meaux,” in Sébastien de Brossard musicien: Actes du colloque de Royaumont-
Versailles, 1995, ed. Jean Duron (Paris: Klincksieck/CMBV, 1998), 311 (a quotation from the
Brossard catalogue). Guillo has referred to the Mass in three recent publications concerning
printed French music paper: “Les papiers à musique imprimés relevés dans le fonds Brossard,” in
Sébastien de Brossard musicien, 109–23; “Les papiers à musique imprimés en France au XVIIe
siècle: Un nouveau critère d’analyse des manuscrits musicaux,” Revue de musicologie 87 (2001):
332; and Pierre I Ballard et Robert III Ballard, imprimeurs du roy pour la musique (1599–1673),
2 vols. (Sprimont, Belgium: CMBV/Mardaga, 2003), 1:806. (Guillo’s dating of the paper is
questioned below.) Jean Duron refers indirectly to the Mass in L’œuvre de Sébastien de Brossard,
1655–1730: Catalogue thématique (Paris: CMBV/Klincksieck, 1995), xlii.
122. The late François Lesure once referred indirectly to the Mass in a private conversation I
had with him in about 1995. I had asked him about any striking curiosities in the BnF holdings,
and I remember him replying there was “a Mass by a seventeenth-century choirmaster . . . rather
The letters cited above concerning Striggio’s 1567 trip mention or imply
the existence of at least four different manuscript sources for the Mass, all dat-
ing from 1566–67:
1. Striggio’s “personal copy” (“la mia coppia istessa”), given to Albrecht V

in February 1567. Since he was in Munich for so few days, it must have
been prepared in Florence.
2. The presentation copy given to Maximilian II in January 1567. It would
also have been prepared in Florence, probably in 1566. Although it is
the first one mentioned in the documents, chronologically it must have
derived from one of Striggio’s “own” manuscripts. (It is unknown
whether the presentation manuscript was in score—a daunting thought
—or in parts.)
3. Striggio must also have had with him a third copy (probably a set of
partbooks) since he arrived in France a few weeks later with the work,
yet had just given away two copies. One credible scenario is that he left
Florence with the presentation copy for the emperor plus his own dou-
ble set of performance parts, perhaps conceived as one set for singers and
one for instrumentalists, if we can extrapolate from Troiano’s statement
that the Munich performances of the forty-part motet in 1568 involved,
apart from the singers, and presumably also apart from the instruments
mentioned in the Zwickau bass part as participating in the performance
of the Bassus ad organum line, a further eight trombones, eight viols,
and eight flutes. Under this hypothesis, copy no. 3 would have been part
of the same set of “personal” parts as copy no. 1, the set he left in
Munich. He could have left there just one copy of each partbook, that
is, half of his performing material.
4. If a double set of parts was needed for a full performance by voices and
instruments, it would then have been necessary in France to make
another set of partbooks, a fourth source. This would be consistent with
the fact that the French performance did not take place until one month
after his arrival, whereas in Munich the performance took place in less
than a week, suggesting that he must have arrived there with all the parts
already made.
mad . . . for forty voices” (“une messe par un maître de chapelle du XVIIe siècle . . . un peu fou
. . . pour quarante voix”). At the time I did not make the connection with the lost Striggio Mass,
partly because Lesure seemed to imply that the Mass was a seventeenth-century French work.
When later consulting Brossard’s own 1724 catalogue in another connection, I came across his
reference to a forty-part Mass and concluded that, whatever it was, it ought in theory to be still
somewhere in the BnF. However, neither Brossard’s original call number (simply “Tome IV.”)
nor the early Bibliothèque nationale call numbers (“Vm 738 1-8” then “Vm 76”) correspond to
any present-day call numbers. With the completion of Yolande de Brossard’s edition of the
Brossard catalogue, which includes the modern call numbers, it became possible to locate the
Mass.
Table 5 Copies of Striggio’s Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno
1. Striggio’s “la mia coppia istessa” (1566?),

given to Albrecht V in Munich in February 1567.
(See Striggio’s letter of 3 March 1567.) Lost.
Possibly the first of two sets of performing parts.
2. Copy presented to Maximilian II 3. Set of parts [?] carried by Striggio from

in Vienna in January 1567. Munich to Paris in March/April 1567
(See Striggio’s letter of (and presumably taken to London in
3 March 1567.) Lost. June 1567, then back to Florence). Lost.
Score? Set of parts? Possibly the second of two sets of parts,
of which the first was left in Munich.
4. Set of parts (?) presumed to have been made in Paris in April/May 1567. Lost.
Possibly made to replace the set left in Munich, so that there was once again a
double set of performing parts.
5. Surviving French copy (ca. 1620–25?)

42 parts, F-Pn: Rés. Vmd. ms 52
(olim Vm1 947)
The speculation that a fourth set existed, made in France, is supported by

features of the complete set of forty-two parts surviving in the BnF. These
partbooks were copied by French scribes (they contain several annotations in
French) and the paper on which they were written is French. However, since
this copy seems to date from the first quarter of the seventeenth century it
cannot have been copied in 1567 and therefore cannot be identified with any
of the four above-mentioned sources. It is most likely to derive from the hypo-
thetical fourth source. The surviving set of parts thus appears to be the fifth of
the various copies of the Mass implied by the correspondence. The suggested
relationship between these copies is summarized in Table 5.
The forty-two surviving partbooks include, as well as one for each of the
forty voices and one for the unfigured Basse Continuée (41) a further extra
bass part (42) that includes, at the start, the beginnings of a fascinating
harmonic outline for a few sections of the Mass. (This is presented in a kind
of short score, on two or three staves, but is rather confused.) The partbooks
are usually made up of eight pages (four leaves) made from a single sheet
(quarto). The main leaf measures, on average, 460 mm x 365 mm. Most of
the booklets were produced by folding the top of the sheet down onto the
bottom and cutting horizontally across the top; then the two left-hand leaves
were folded over onto the right-hand ones. The average size of the resultant
partbooks is 230 mm x 182 mm.
The cards from the 1930s in the BnF card catalogue correctly identify
the watermark as being that of Sébastien Gouault, a member of a dynasty of
French paper makers in the town of Troyes (some eighty miles southeast of
Paris). This main watermark, showing grapes and the letters S G, is found in
partbooks 1–9, 11–13, 15–42. (A second, still unidentified watermark is found
in partbooks 10 and 14.) Two papermakers with the name Sébastien Gouault
are known, father and son. The evidence suggests that the paper might be the
work of the son. Briquet identified him as having been a marchand papetier
in Troyes in 1634.123 Gaudriault asserts he was already active as early as 1599
and also refers to a similar paper by one of the Gouaults (possibly the father),
dating from 1611 which measures exactly 460 mm x 365 mm. Several other
similar papers also survive, with dates associated with the years 1605, 1607,
1622, 1624 and 1625.124
A further clue to the dating of the surviving copy may come from the fact
that the six music staves on each page are printed, with a blank inset for the
first staff of each page. This has recently lead Laurent Guillo to suggest that
the paper is the same as the one he calls “PAP-4” and to postulate a date for
the paper of 1640–1670, based on the fact that Sébastien II Gouault appar-
ently died only in 1668.125 I find it hard to agree with this dating. It seems a
123. Charles M. Briquet, Les filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques de papier dès leur
apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1923; repr.,
Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1977), 1:86 and 2:342.
124. Raymond Gaudriault, with Thérèse Gaudriault, Filigranes et autres caractéristiques des
papiers fabriqués en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: CNRS, J. Telford, 1995), 152. The
main watermark used for the Mass is closest to Gaudriault no. 950 (see plate 104). The initials un-
derneath are clearly S and G. Gaudriault gives this for about 1625 but notes that a similar model
was being used in 1611. See also p. 309, where papers with a similar watermark are listed as dating
from as early as 1607 and from 1622. The bunch of grapes found in the watermark of the Mass
paper is surmounted by a design closer to a fleur de lys than a cross, similar to what is on top of a
watermark by Jean Gouault (Gaudriault no. 949, dated 1605). It is also similar to a watermark
found in “pièces justificatives comptes de Clermont—1624” attributed to “la Champagne . . .
Sébastien Gouault”; see Pierre Delaunay, Catalogue des filigranes relevés sur des papiers d’archives
d’Auvergne, Mémoires 56 (Clermont-Ferrand: Académie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de
Clermont-Ferrand, 1997), 152–53, 347, no. 2398.
125. “In fact, this music paper is printed between 1640 and 1700, approximately, but the pa-
per maker Sébastien II Gouault died in 1668. The manuscript can therefore be dated between
1640 and 1670” (“En effet, ce papier à musique est imprimé entre 1640 et 1700 environ mais le
papetier Sébastien II Gouault décède en 1668. Le manuscrit peut donc être daté entre 1640 et
1670”); see Guillo, “Les papiers . . . dans le fonds Brossard,” 117–18. The two-line information
identifying the Striggio Mass paper as “PAP-4” (but without further discussion of the dating) is
generation too late, judging from both the evidence of other known Gouault
papers and the nature of the musical handwriting. Moreover, the Mass paper
is not identical to the format Guillo describes, and he bases his dating exclu-
sively on the nature of the printed staves rather than the paper itself or the style
of the musical notation. Until more research is completed on the Gouault
dynasty, it is safe to say only that the paper was made by one of the Gouaults
of Troyes. I believe it probably dates from the first quarter of the seventeenth
century and that the earliest dating for Guillo’s “PAP-4” might therefore need
to be pushed back a generation.
It is not known how or from whom Brossard acquired the Mass, or where
it was during the seventeenth century.126 It is difficult not to think of the
“Lesson or song of forty parts” said by Anthony Wood to have been examined
in 1601 by John Bull in the Music School of the cathedral at Saint-Omer, then
part of Spanish Flanders.127 English musicologists have been tempted to see
here a shadowy reference to Spem in alium.128 Yet if there really was a work in
forty parts at Saint-Omer, the Mass is surely a better candidate. When Striggio
reached Milan he wrote to Francesco de’ Medici on 20 August 1567 stating
that his return from England had taken him through Flanders and France
(“per il camino di fiandra et di francia”).129 At the very least, here is a reason-
able explanation of how a forty-part work could have arrived in Saint-Omer
and been seen in 1601.130 The surviving copy of Striggio’s Mass, apparently
repeated in idem, “Les papiers à musique imprimés en France,” 332; and idem, Pierre I Ballard
1:806.
126. Since Brossard worked for many years at the cathedral in Meaux (some thirty miles east
of Paris), Jean Duron speculated that the partbooks may perhaps have come from there, although
this is not supported by any evidence. See Brossard, Catalogue, xlii.
127. Saint-Omer became part of France only in 1677. It had become a bishopric in 1553 and
had been a cathedral town from 1561. The church fell into ruins at the French Revolution, when
a large part of its vast archives was dispersed or destroyed. Anthony Wood continues the curious
story with the more startling news that Bull added a further forty parts to the piece (an idea that
Burney called “silly”). The tale may somehow have become garbled.
128. For example, Denis Stevens, “A songe,” 180.
129. He also states that his original request for extended leave had been to visit both England
and Flanders (“a veder ingalterra, et la fiandra”), although Flanders was not in fact mentioned in
the earlier surviving letter requesting permission to go to England.
130. One different explanation could be that what Bull really saw was a copy of John
Farmer’s Divers and Sundry Waies of Two Parts in One, to the Number of Fortie, uppon One Playn
Song (London: Este, 1591), or perhaps a manuscript copy of the forty canons (“fortie waies”)
“2 partes in one upon the playne songe Miserere,” mentioned by Morley in 1597 and published
six years later as the famous Medulla: Musicke sucked out of the sappe of . . . Master William Byrd . . .
and Master Alphonso Ferabosco (unfortunately now lost). Misereres were standard teaching mate-
rial for choirboys in music schools. Both Bull and Morley had been students of Byrd and would
have learned such skills. The idea of Bull adding to an existing set of forty canons a further forty
(perhaps using some of the clever techniques later described by Simpson; see note 109) is not
“silly,” judging from his stunning virtuosity in that discipline as displayed in the Vienna manu-
script of nearly 150 canons attributed to him. Most are on the Miserere. Some are unusually
dating from the first quarter of the seventeenth century, could have been
copied from it and then found its way into Brossard’s collection at the end of
the century.
By contrast, the source’s location for the last 281 years is easy to demon-
strate. When Brossard presented his collection in 1726 to Louis XV in return
for the promise of a small pension, the manuscript partbooks for the Striggio
Mass, along with his whole music library, became part of the Bibliothèque
royale. They were thus transferred in due course to the Bibliothèque
nationale.131
The source escaped notice for so long because of a series of errors by which
Striggio’s name mutated through “Strigio” to “Strigeo,” then “Struseo,”
finally reaching “Strusco” in 1914. Two different forms of his name are given
in the source: partbook 42, after giving the full title of the work, simply says it
is by “Allessandro.” Partbook 41, on close inspection, appears to give his
name as “alexandre strigio.” Striggio himself sometimes used this form with
only one “g,” and does so in the letter about the Mass written from France on
18 May 1567.132 However, the name “strigio” on partbook 41 was altered by
someone to look like “strigeo,” and the whole attribution is written so badly
and in such tiny characters that Brossard understandably misread the name.
Not only was he misled by the correction from “strigio” to “strigeo” (causing
him to accept the “e”), but he also misread the letters “ig” in the middle of
the name as a “u” followed by a long “s” (a curious error, but understandable
when one sees the manuscript). This created the name “Struseo.” Brossard
scrupulously expressed his doubts in an annotation found in his personal
catalog of the collection (F-Pn, Rés. Vm8 20).133
complex puzzle canons and remain unsolved. (See Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek,
Musiksammlung, Mus. Hs. 17771 Mus. R/XVII/Bull/1. Others are found in London, British
Library, R.M.24.c.14, and R.M.24.f.25.)
131. See Pierre Josserand and Jean Bruno, “Les estampilles du Département des imprimés de
la Bibliothèque nationale,” in Mélanges d’histoire du livre et des bibliothèques offerts à M. Frantz
Calot, 262–98 (Paris: Librairie d’Argences, 1960). After the French Revolution, the Bibliothèque
royale became the Bibliothèque nationale. Despite the controlling body changing its name seven
times, the manuscript has been housed in the same great national collection since 1726.
132. For a facsimile of this letter see Butchart, “Musical Journey,” 6, plate I; and idem,
“Letters,” 26. The spelling with one “g” was used all his life, as is shown by the signatures on
twelve of the fifty-three surviving letters given in “Letters” (from 6 November 1563 to 22 April
1587); he signs “strigi” on 23 February 1564.
133. Sébastien de Brossard, Catalogue. Des liures de Musique Theorique et Prattique, Vocalle et
instrumentalle, tant imprimée que manuscripte, qui sont dans Le cabinet du Sr. Sebastien de
Brossard chanoine de Meaux, et dont il supplie tres humblement sa majesté d’accepter le Don, pour
être mis et conseruez dans sa Bibliotheque. fait et escrit en L’année 1724 (F-Pn, Rés. Vm8 20; second
copy (1727), Rés. Vm8 21). This title wording in Brossard’s own hand is followed by an annota-
tion in another hand: “Ce Cabinez a été deposé a la Bibliotheque du Roy et collationné a l’origi-
nal de ce catalogue Le 22e. May 1726. [signed] Jourdain.”
Manuscripts, In 4o, Church music, For the morning. Separate parts: Mass for
five choirs of 8 parts each, or 40 different parts and a Basso continuo by
Signore Alessandro Struseo (if I am not mistaken, because this name is very
badly written at the start of the Basso continuo part). There is no year given,
but the style is at least one hundred years old. The presence of the Basso con-
tinuo indicates moreover that this Mass was composed after the invention of
the Basso continuo by Viadana; and so I believe that it was composed in about
1615, or 1620. This Mass is more curious than useful, especially in France, for
in fact [one needs to have] the means of assembling at least 150 musicians suffi-
ciently competent to perform it. 41 parts.134
In the right-hand margin, in Brossard’s hand, is the erroneous name

“Alessandro Struseo.” On the outer cover of partbook 41 the French title “Basse
Continuée Pour la messe a Quarante Parties” is followed by the addition, in
Brossard’s hand, of the attribution “di Alessandro Struseo” (see Figure 3).
In 1726, since Brossard’s own catalogue of his collection was rather worn,
a professional copy of it was made. In this second version (F-Pn, Rés. Vm8 21),
finished in 1727, the wording of the marginal comments is virtually identical.
The name is written as “Struseo” but with a modern short “s” rather than a
long one. However, this time the door was left open for a new error to creep
in: the copyist wrote the “e” with a high crossbar, traced very faintly. This left
the “e” in “Struseo” looking like a “c.”
In 1914, when the set of parts for the Mass was listed in Écorcheville’s
printed Catalogue du fonds de musique ancienne de la Bibliothèque nationale,
the logical next mishap occurred and the name was printed as “Strusco.”135 A
further indignity also occurred: the number of parts is twice given erroneously
as being only “4” instead of “40.” Did a proof corrector at the time simply
not believe the figure “40” and remove the zero? This error is particularly
striking since the catalog includes a correct musical incipit (of just the first
soprano part), so the person responsible for the entry must have seen at least
the first partbook, clearly identified as being “Primo coro, 1, a 8. voc.”
134. See Brossard, Catalogue 1724, 301, under the general heading “Composers” (“Pratti-
ciens,” as distinct from the theorists in the first part of the catalogue). “Manuscripts, In 4o.
Musique d’Eglise Pour le matin. Parties separees . . . Messe a cinq choeurs de 8. parties chacun ou
40. parties differentes et une Basse continüe del Sgre Alessandro Struseo (si je ne me trompe, car
ce nom est fort mal escrit au commencement de la Basse Continüe). Il n’y a point d’année mar-
quée, mais le stille est ancien au moins de cent ans. La B. Continüe d’ailleurs fait voir que cette
messe a été composée apres L’invention de la B. Continüe par Viadana; et ainsi je crois que ça esté
vers l’an 1615, ou 1620. Cette messe est plus curieuse, qu’utile, sur tout en France, car enfin
[il faut avoir] le moyen d’assembler au moins 150. musiciens assez habiles pour L’executer.
41 parties.”
135. Écorcheville, Catalogue 8:83 (1914). Striggio’s name seems to have been particularly
prone to this problem. In Munich in 1567 he is referred to as “Florentiner Stritio,” and a refer-
ence to his portrait in Dresden was mentioned in 1629 as being of “Alessandro Stuchio.” See
Kirkendale, Court Musicians, 70, 81.
Figure 3 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno. Title page of part 42, with Brossard’s addi-
tion of the erroneous name “Alessandro Struseo.” Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés.
Vmd. ms 52 (olim Vm1 947).
Écorcheville’s Catalogue entry referring to the Mass therefore reads

“STRUSCO (A.).—Messe à 4 parties” and the parts are identified as “4 ps.
in-4o.” It is easy to be surprised by all this now, but the volume in which the
“Strusco” misattribution appeared was the eighth and last volume of the
Catalogue, published hastily just at the start of the Great War that was to claim
Écorcheville’s life a few months later.136
The result of these cumulative errors stretching over two hundred years was
dramatic. Not only was the Mass deprived of both its composer’s correct name
and its title, but it lost the one thing that might have drawn attention to it—
the true number of voices in the work. So the forty-part Missa sopra Ecco sì
beato giorno in cinque Corri divisa by Alessandro Striggio languished through-
out the twentieth century disguised as a nameless four-part Mass by Strusco.
Since such a work would appear to be entirely banal, and since no such com-
poser ever existed, scholars have not been in a rush to study this music.
136. He enlisted in September 1914, and died on 19 February 1915 leading his infantry
company on an assault in Champagne. See John Trevitt and Jean Gribenski, “Ecorcheville, Jules
(Armand Joseph),” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (2001), 7:870.
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Abstract
It has been known for twenty-five years that Alessandro Striggio the elder, the
most important composer at the Medici court in Florence in the 1560s
and 1570s, wrote a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass in forty parts, with
an Agnus Dei in sixty parts, but the piece has always been thought lost.
This major artwork from the high Florentine Renaissance does in fact sur-
vive (F-Pn, Rés. Vmd. ms 52). Entitled Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, it is
Striggio’s most imposing composition, and underlines the early eminence of
Florence in the art of massive polychoral writing. The last movement is indeed
in sixty real parts. The Mass also appears to have been used by the Medici as a
political tool in the art of cultural diplomacy. Offered in January 1567 to Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian II at exactly the moment when Cosimo de’
Medici was seeking approval from Maximilian of a royal title (granted finally
as “Grand Duke” by Pope Pius V in 1569), the Mass was also performed by
Lassus’s colleagues in Munich and under Striggio’s direction at court in
France, a few weeks before he visited the court of Queen Elizabeth I in
London in June 1567. The links with Striggio’s forty-part motet Ecce beatam
lucem and with Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium, are discussed, as are the
reasons why the source of the Mass remained unknown throughout the
twentieth century.
Keywords: Alessandro Striggio, 16th-century polychoral music, Mass in forty

parts, Cosimo de’ Medici, Florence, Thomas Tallis

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Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts

Author(s): DAVITT MORONEY

American Musicological Society, University of California Press are collaborating with

In memory of Philip Brett

6. Butchart, “Musical Journey,” 11.

Author Title Voices Date Source

All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

I. The Mass and Striggio’s 1566–1567 Journey to Vienna,

MacClintock [Neuhausen-Stuttgart: American Institute of Musicology, Hänssler Verlag, 1985],

1. A letter dated 3 March 1567,19 written to Cosimo’s son Francesco de’

According to Striggio’s own letters, after leaving Florence he had first

Catherine’s court was ostensibly extravagant, but financial circumstances

relatively at home at the French court, musically, linguistically, and culturally.

II. The Mass, the Emperor, and the Grand Duke

Alfonso II d’Este, duke of Ferrara (he had earlier been married to

are now untraceable.) Maximilian therefore had a particular interest in such

Medici themselves. Warren Kirkendale has shown that on occasions of partic-

opening words of a comparable text, possibly a lauda. It clearly relates to a cel-

III. The “Striggio-Tallis Link” and “Heavenly Harmony”

In Queen Elizabeth’s time yere was a songe sen[t] into England of

music, including a manuscript book of madrigals he received in 1568 that had

IV. Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, in cinque Corri

Example 1 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, opening of Gloria

Example 2 Striggio, Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, opening of Credo

Alessandro Striggio’s Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts 39

Example 3 Striggio, opening of Ecce beatam lucem

V. Strategies and Techniques of Composition in Forty Voices

Patrem omnipotentem, (twice) a8 (V; then IV)

for so extravagant a number of voices. This last point also requires us to

Voices Subchoir Clef groupings

I: FIRST DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

II: SECOND DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

III: THIRD DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

IV: FOURTH DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

V: FIFTH DOUBLE CHOIR (a8):

Voices Subchoir Found in partbooks Clef groupings

I: FIRST TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

II: SECOND TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

III: THIRD TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

IV: FOURTH TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

V: FIFTH TRIPLE CHOIR (a12):

corresponding to the division into “cinque Corri,” is not incompatible with

voices of Striggio’s second Agnus Dei come in progressively from 1 to 60, in

Melismatic and syllabic styles

PRIMO CORO. C major triadic entries, each voice starting on:

tripled) without any contrapuntal danger: there is no risk of creating parallel

Example 5 Schema for generating consonances in many parts

$ ðð ýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ

Example 6 Schema for generating consonances in many parts (continued)

$ ðð ýý ŁŁŁ ððð ððð ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ ÐÐÐ

110. Ibid., 154–55.

111. Michael Praetorius, Theatrum instrumentorum seu sciagraphia (Wolfenbüttel: Holwein,

117. Brett, “Facing the Music,” 347–48.

Appendix Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno by Striggio / Strigio /

1. Striggio’s “personal copy” (“la mia coppia istessa”), given to Albrecht V

Table 5 Copies of Striggio’s Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno

1. Striggio’s “la mia coppia istessa” (1566?),

2. Copy presented to Maximilian II 3. Set of parts [?] carried by Striggio from

5. Surviving French copy (ca. 1620–25?)

The speculation that a fourth set existed, made in France, is supported by

In the right-hand margin, in Brossard’s hand, is the erroneous name

Écorcheville’s Catalogue entry referring to the Mass therefore reads

Simpson, Christopher. A Compendium of Practical Musick in five Parts. London: