Music masters and music for university students in the sixteenth century

This paper presents the first results of my research focused on the Renaissance personal diaries of magistri musicae and university students interested in musical studies. In the sixteenth century, university students, to complete their personal training, often attended the schools of music masters present in the university cities, as well as the workshops of instrument makers. The aim of the research project is to identify, for the first time, this student population and their music masters and artisans in order to reconstruct their network of relationships within the broader European context. The main sources for the prosopographic research are the personal notebooks of the magistri musicae, which contain the dedications of their students, and those of the students themselves, which document the contacts established with prominent personalities during the study trip by means of signatures. The latter include those of music masters, composers, musicians and instrument makers who often accompanied their dedication with musical notes. Therefore, the project involves four main research fields: 1) the first-ever cataloguing of this student population and its music masters; 2) integrating biographies and works of music masters, musicians and instrument makers; 3) identifying new professional subjects not yet present in the repertoires; 4) editing a heretofore unpublished corpus of sacred and profane music.