ABSTRACT
This chapter explores collaborative processes and challenges faced by Renaissance musicians in the creation, performance, transmission and interpretation of musical works involving often obscure and deliberately puzzling musical notation and accompanying textual materials. Because many puzzle canons deal with religious texts and were performed in sacred contexts, the chapter gives particular attention to the theological motivations surrounding their creation, including works that appear to group together as part of broader contemporary exegeses on specific sacred texts. In late medieval and early modern art music there are numerous instances of musical riddles that tested musicians' abilities to navigate complex mensural notation and technical compositional procedures. Although the composition, copying, dissemination and performance of a musical work involved different individuals, it was often the case in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that there was little or no actual physical encounter between them. The strands of intellectual thought merged together in many fascinating ways in the artistic output of the era.
