Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century

This was precisely the kind of piece the Council of Trent had tried to ban at an earlier phase of the
Counter Reformation: “Let nothing profane be intermingled,” so the decree read in 1562, “when Masses
are celebrated with singing and with organ.”^8 That was then. By the turn of the century the “church
militant” had decided it had better pack them in by hook or crook. A church service that included battle-
pieces along with “concerted” motets or psalms or Masses was to all intents and purposes a “concert.”
And indeed, Venetian cathedral services at the height of the Counter Reformation could well be looked
upon as the earliest public concerts (for a “mass” audience, so to speak). Huge congregations flocked to
them, and their fame was spread abroad so that travelers made special journeys to Venice, already a
major tourist spot, to hear the music. Thomas Coryat, an English court jester and travel writer, visited