ABSTRACT
Italian sources mixing text less instrumental music with a significant proportion of texted French chansons and other types. Text less canonries preserving a similar repertory copied outside Italy. Casanatense has also been identified in modern times as a wind repertory, specifically that of the Ferrarese alta cappella of loud wind instruments. Folios 159–198 contain 67 three-voiced pieces, all without text, of which over half are either res facta or consort ricercare pieces, making this the largest single compilation of these types to survive. Ottaviano Petrucci’s invention in Venice of the first effective means of printing mensural music at the very end of the fifteenth century marks a watershed in the way that music was compiled and distributed. It is significant that Petrucci chose to herald his innovation by the publication not of Masses or motets, but of textless and presumably instrumental repertories.
