ABSTRACT
When Brancaccio returned to the court of Ferrara at the beginning of November 1580, he may have thought that he still knew how to play the role of courtier according to a more or less Castiglionian ‘grammar of behaviour’ and he did not take the hint that the incident at Belriguardo the previous summer was symptomatic of something far-reaching; indeed, he seems to have dismissed Duke Alfonso’s objections as a minor peccadillo. But in fact, the duke’s revolutionary project to change the way that music was made in the private sphere, and his conception of Brancaccio’s role in it, was emblematic of a general move away from the traditional courtly social order, in which the metiers ‘soldier’ and ‘courtier’ might map effortlessly one onto the other. The series of incidents and misunderstandings between Brancaccio and the duke which followed are a microcosm of these changes.
