This book proposes new ways of exploring vocal and instrumental music in northern and central Italy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The text focuses on the consolidation of the 'High Renaissance' style of Josquin Desprez and his contemporaries, and the subsequent transformation of this style under the pressure of new aesthetic and functional demands made upon music, and of shifting social, political and cultural circumstances as Italy moved into the period of the Counter-Reformation, and the arts moved through Mannerism into the Baroque. The effects of these changing contexts upon such masters as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Claudio Monteverdi are fully documented here, but this is less a 'great composer' book than a study of secular, sacred and theatrical styles and genres, both within the musical market-place and in relation to music's sister arts. The author also attempts to view music, and indeed all the arts, as essentially political phenomena, conditioned by (but also conditioning) social and cultural constraints. There are copious music examples and an extensive bibliography; considerable space is also devoted to extracts from contemporary documents in translation to allow the reader first-hand experience of one of the most exciting periods in music history.