ABSTRACT
From the middle of the fifteenth century, festivals played a leading part in the way the court presented its image. In the sumptuous forms of display, in the variety of costume, setting and music, in the elaborate presentation of ceremonial spectacle, the Italian court of the early Renaissance displayed its splendour and set out the values by which it was to be judged. As regards the role of music in the festivals reserved for the court, an examination of the various performance elements reveals certain recurring features, characterized essentially by two main modes of execution: the accompanied song and the dance spectacle. The use of iconography to study the performance of music in the middle Ages and in the Renaissance is well established, and historians of dance have long used figurative representation to reconstruct positions and steps as well as the social context and setting.
