Music in Renaissance Lyons.

In the present volume Frank Dobbins has given us the first comprehensive study of sixteenth-century Lyons as a musical center. A substantial chapter on music in the literature of the city commends the book to literary scholars and musicologists alike.

Located in favorable proximity to Switzerland and Italy, Renaissance Lyons was easily reached by trade-routes and navigable waterways. Civic independence, intellectual tolerance, and private enterprise came to be its hallmarks. German, Florentine and Venetian financiers established Lyons as a major European banking center, and the celebrated trade fairs gave its merchants access to international markets. Through the efforts of the prosperous bourgeoisie, the city attained a relative political autonomy. Geographically removed from the constraining influences of the Parisian Parlement and Sorbonne, sixteenth-century Lyons emerged as a distinguished printing center, a haven for freethinkers and humanists, and a foyer of the Reformation.

The city was enriched both culturally and economically by a substantial colony of Italian immigrants. This group contributed numerous composers, musicians, instrument-builders, and printers, among them the Istrian-born Jacopo Moderno (Jacques Moderne), a giant among European publishers of music and a rival of the Parisian Attaingnant. The use of Lyons as a base for the French royalty during the Italian wars further intensified the taste for personal luxury and cultural manifestations.

The book opens with a depiction of this metropolis of the French Renaissance. Successive chapters survey references to music in the literature of Lyons; the activity of musicians and instrument-makers, including official and private musical engagements; music copied or printed; composers in or near the city; and nine characteristic musical genres. Six helpful appendices, compiled from sources both primary and secondary, list musicians and instrument-makers mentioned in the archives, music printed in Lyons (excluding liturgical chantbooks and reprints), and resident and visiting patrons of music. Nine musical examples, a bibliography of works cited more than once, and a thorough index complete the study.

Dobbins's account is broadly based and immensely detailed. It covers some nineteen authors, fifteen printers, and over fifty composers. Although the presentation is organized schematically - the authors, composers, printers, and musical genres are considered one-by-one - certain major trends emerge. In particular, the music printing industry is seen to reflect the phases of the city's cultural development: the impetus provided by immigrants from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; the rise to distinction, in the middle third of the century, of Lyonese composers and poets; the growing emphasis on Protestant concerns, and the city's fall from prominence as religious strife intensified.

The Italian influence ranged from literary Platonism and Petrarchism to the use of Roman and Florentine madrigal styles. Though the plainsong tradition prevailed in the cathedral and the parish churches, the sumptuous Dominican chapel supported by Florentine immigrants doubtless helped shape the demand for sacred polyphony. The Protestant interest in middle-class edification and instruction favored the printing of musical manuals and treatises; canticles and spiritual songs suitable for domestic performance; and the official Genevan settings of metrical psalm translations by Marot, Beze, and others.

Dobbins concludes that the "simple homophonic syllabic manner of setting stanzaic sacred texts of various metres is perhaps the only discernible style for which Lyons might claim precedence" (279). Indeed the city's musical production, taken as a whole, is marked by an eclecticism that befits a vital cultural crossroad. The absence of a resident princely patron or choral foundation that might have conditioned local tastes further distinguishes Lyons from centers such as Mantua, Ferrara and Bruges, which have been the subject of recent studies.

Crowning twenty-five years of research and publication in this domain by the author, the book provides a wealth of knowledge that will surely inspire further investigation. Among the topics that deserve such exploration, word/music relationships hold pride of place. As Dobbins shows, references to music figure prominently in the writings of the ecole lyonnaise, and the composers' concern with setting texts of literary merit is frequently apparent.

While its numerous subdivisions may entail certain repetitions, the format of the volume makes for ease of consultation. Music in Renaissance Lyons is a solid achievement: for the judicious choice of subject and the thoroughness with which it is surveyed, specialists of literature and music will be grateful.

VINCENT POLLINA Tufts University