Claude V. Palisca has long been acknowledged as a leading authority of Italian music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These nineteen essays, originally published between 1956 and 1980, draw together a body of significant research into Italian music and music theory, and make readily available papers widely scattered and most now out-of-print.

They have further been selected because of their relevance to current research, as evidenced by their continued citation in publications and dissertations.

The book is in two parts: studies on the History of Italian Music Theory and studies in the History of Italian Music. The thread that runs through the book is the interaction between music theory and practice and between the humanist revival of antiquity and modern ideals of expression in the decades around 1600, a time of transition between the Renaissance and Baroque.

A prefatory note - sometimes extensive - accompanies each of the older essays, reviewing recent research on the topic, including the author's, and reactions and responses to the original article. Footnote references have been brought up to date. The text is complemented by over a hundred music examples and a number of illustrations.