I.—May 1475:  The Siege of Neuss
“Chroniclers consistently reported that Charles the Bold of Burgundy was nowhere more at home than in his military camps, where foreign dignitaries and ambassadors were received and entertained with as much ceremony as at his palaces in the Low Countries,” the Milanese Ambassador reported from the siege of Neuss. “Even though the Duke is in camp, every evening he has sung something new in his quarters; and sometimes his lordship sings, though he does not have a good voice; but he is skilled in music.”  Composers who would have been with the Duke include Busnoys, Ghiseghem, and Morton.

II.—1479:  The Plague, England
Surely there has never been a more shattering loss of life than that experienced following the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348; something like a third of the entire population of Europe was wiped out.  What is not so well known is that the plague frequently returned and families, rich and poor, lived in terror of discovering the first signs of the disease – hard, dry swellings in various parts of the body and small black pustules.  Here, the Burgundian Ambassador reports from the royal household at Windsor, where the young composer Walter Lambe has just been employed after the death of his predecessor…….from the plague!

III.—November 1475:  The Court of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Milan
As the fortunes of the Burgundians receded, the focus of cultural activity in Europe was increasingly seen to be the family dynastic courts of Italy. Much in the same way that European soccer teams (or American football teams?) today attempt to lure the brightest stars into their service with huge sums of money, so the Sforza, Medici and d’Este families did with singers and composers.  Records of Ambassadors have survived testifying to the amounts of money needed to secure the services of the best tenors of the day – not far off the modern equivalent, some would say – and the cost of the top composers.  Works of Compère, Agricola, and Josquin Desprez.

IV.—1508:  The Sistine Chapel, Rome
In May 1508 a contract was signed for a fresco to be painted on a ceiling in an Italian chapel.  Hardly an unusual occurrence for the time and place, other than the fact that the men involved were Pope Julius II and the young Florentine artist, Michelangelo Buonarotti.  There were those around at the time willing to express their doubts at entrusting such a task to a man, who by his own admission, was considered a fine sculptor, but an unproven painter.  In this report from Rome, the English Ambassador comments on the gossiping in Roman society about the work of this young upstart.  Works of  Dufay, Brumel, and Obrecht (500th anniversary in 2005).

V.—September 1506;  The Death of Philip the Fair of Burgundy, Burgos, Spain
On Duke Philip’s second visit to Spain he was struck down by fever. His grief-stricken widow Juana (daughter of the “Catholic Monarchs,” Ferdinand and Isabella, and nicknamed “The Mad”) was tipped into a state of madness by her loss.  “Thus the good woman passed her time without wishing to know more than a new-born child of the affairs of the kingdom…except that she retained the greater part of the singers of her late husband and treated them very well;…she took no pleasure in any other thing.”  Music of La Rue, La Torre, Peñalosa, and Anchieta (who was probably himself a spy).

VI.—1533:  The Marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Lady Anne Boleyn
A pivotal moment in English and, indeed, European history.  Henry’s obsession with Anne determined him to divorce Katherine of Aragon (sister-in-law of Philip the Fair of Burgundy) and in so doing take the English church away from Rome. This was the political scandal of the century – some say that Henry married Anne secretly even before he had officially divorced Katherine, others that it was a shotgun wedding.  Whatever the case may be, the Ambassadors (for example, a report from London from Jean de Dinteville, Ambassador to His Royal Majesty King Francis of France), come into their own as the gossip columnists of their age, and their relish for this task matches everything that their modern counterparts can come up with!  Music by Cornish and (from the Anne Boleyn Songbook) King Henry VIII.