ABSTRACT
A portion of the monody repertory—in particular music directly associated with specific singers or their patrons—remained in manuscript. Brimelli's rhetorical strategies merit close analysis. He appears anxious to defend himself both from personal attack and from the prejudice of those who do not believe that mere singing teachers can produce significant musical works. In the late sixteenth century, the number of primers appearing from the music presses increased sharply in response to the broadening market for music prints and to the shift of music theory from the science of number to the practice of art. Many musicians involved in the "new music" appear defensive, hiding behind colleagues or friends as editors, or behind fellow performers and patrons as witnesses to their art. In his Discorso sopra la musica, the Roman commentator Vincenzo Giustiniani is wistfully ambivalent about developments in music over the previous fifty or so years.
