ABSTRACT
References to musical performances in clearly identifiable places or locales occur infrequently in surviving documents from the premodern era. Music takes pride of place in Gatari's account: it precedes all other formalities staged by Padua's officials for the arriving Emperor, including his ritual welcome by the ecclesiastical head of the Paduan congregation, Stefano da Carrara. Identity and locality, as illustrated by their repeated treatment in the human sciences and music research, escape simple definitions. Just as the act of reading is the space produced by the practice of the written text for Certeau, it can be posited that musical performance is the practice of realizing a score or other form of musical 'text'. The Lisbon prints show varying degrees of influence and the gradual erosion of a regional identity by an increasingly universal set of musical practices in West European chant, providing a final glimpse of a distinct and local musical identity.
