ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Festival proceedings that show an uneasy tact and avoidance of confrontation between those who assumed instrumental participation and those who rejected it. It argues that certain kinds of special occasion instruments were quite often present in church and performing during Mass. The evidence that instrumentalists sometimes took part in sacred polyphonic performance in Josquin's time is likely to be unpopular within the present climate of opinion; and to be perfectly honest they rather dislike the idea themselves. In universities throughout the world, the crumhorns, shawms and even renaissance recorders so eagerly purchased during the 1960s are now gathering dust, virtually relegated to the limbo of a musicological past. In 1971 most performances of Josquin's sacred music included instruments. What evidence there is would seem to suggest that instrumental participation, favoured for certain magnificent purposes, took the form of doubling and had no more sophisticated musical intent.
