ABSTRACT
An increased prominence of what may loosely be termed humanist thought led to some unexpected developments in musical traditions on the Italian peninsula during the sixteenth century. This reform had far-reaching consequences for the role of the tonus peregrinus in psalmody throughout all Catholic lands, but it is covered in the present chapter because its effects were felt earliest and most strongly in Italian music. The preservation and onward transmission of the distinct psalmodic tradition traced in the present study was ensured, if for no better reasons, by the lack of any recognized alternative practices and by virtue of the theological importance of Psalm. If we leave general liturgical considerations aside, we can see that Psalm and the antiphons connected with it remained central in discussions of practical Gregorian psalmody during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Steele has discussed fully how the various paraphrases of the psalm-tone function in this work.
