ABSTRACT
Music has been shown to bridge many boundaries: language, culture, the natural and the supernatural, and, to some extent, also gender. In the sixteenth century professional musicians were generally considered members of the servant classes, though occasionally on a par with a baker or shoemaker. Italian Humanism saw the rise of the gentleman musician, but that cultural change only reached England much later and never to the same extent. 1 However, English musicians had found effective ways of circumventing the rigid social hierarchy by using their profession.
