Based on extensive documentary and archival research, Music in Renaissance Ferrara is a study of the rise of music at a vital center of Italian Renaissance culture, focusing on the patrons and musicians whose efforts gave Ferrara a primary role in European music during the fifteenth century. The successive rulers of the Italian city-state, members of the Este dynasty, brought to Ferrara some of the most important composers of the period, including Guillaume
Dufay, Johannes Martini, Jacob Obrecht, and Josquin Desprez. Moreover, Ferrara has long been famous as the seat of activity of three of the most important poets of the period - Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso - as well as for its school of painting and manuscript production and illumination. With Lewis Lockwood's
Music in Renaissance Ferrara, the city-state steps forward as a major musical center as well. Winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society for its original 1985 edition, this current paperback edition of Music in Renaissance Ferrara features a new preface that re-introduces the book and reflects on its contribution to our modern knowledge of music in the culture of the Italian Renaissance.