ABSTRACT
The composer Peter Philips was one of many international Catholic refugees at the Brussels court of the Archdukes. He was a member, paying handsomely in order to secure one of the weekly endowed Masses. The development of the musical establishment at Our Lady of the Assumption, including Philips's compositional contributions to its services, took place in the context of the musical practices of the region's confraternities and the musical culture at Sint-Goedele and at Isabella's court. Antwerp's Marian confraternity had a history of singing few-voiced motets as early as 1590, the time of his residency in the city. The whole of the Spanish Netherlands suffered economic collapse during Isabella's last years, sending the region into cultural obscurity and leading many modern scholars to label seventeenth-century Belgium as a musical backwater. Among individual musicians receiving regular payments were adult singers, a cornettist, a player of the grooten bas and a violinist, all regularly employed at Isabella's court.
