Warrior, Courtier, Singer

'This is well worth reading...' Early Music Review 'To tell such a life's story demands that biographer be as versatile as subject, skilled in social and literary history, musicology, and archival research. Richard Wistreich, himself a world-class bass, deploys such skills and more in the book under review... a book at once rich in new documents and insightful interpretation.' Renaissance Quarterly 'Wistreich's accomplishment in this book is not only to provide a wealth of new documents and interpretation that adds to, and sometimes changes, what we think we know about mid- to late 16th-century music and performance practice, but also to spur on further research and musical experimentation, and to provide an effective alternative model for musical biography.' Early Music '... in the course of this fascinating biography, Wistreich has made significant contributions not only to our understanding of the performance of sixteenth-century repertories, but to larger issues of the role of music in culture and, indeed, of culture in music. That the means to these ends turns out to be a real page-turner is a bonus we don't often get in musicology.' Notes '... [an] innovative and well-crafted biography ... this book makes a major contribution to cultural and social history, musicology, and gender studies, demonstrating how musical practice and especially vocal virtuosity interacted with other aspects of male noble identity in the late Renaissance.' Sixteenth Century Journal 'Wistreich's biography provides an important corrective to musicologists' usual view: singing came low in Brancaccio's list of priorities as an honorable nobleman and he saw himself first and foremost as a warrior. ...This significant book will obviously appeal to musicologists, but it should also interest anyone working on performance of gender and class in the early modern period.' Renaissance Studies