ing to Rome for
the best musicians with the purpose of founding an orchestra so that
composers and singers would be attracted to his court. But as this fine
project had no direct bearing on the history of the lyric drama we may
permit it to pass without further examination.

However far we may follow the extracts from the archives of Mantua in
the fifteenth century, we get nothing definite in regard to the
production of the first Italian secular and lyric drama at that court.
We are driven into the hazardous realm of conjecture as to the relations
between its production and the prominent musicians who formed part of
the suite of the Marquis. This indeed is but natural, since it could not
be expected of the Marquis and his associates that they should know they
were making history.

We learn that in 1481 Gian Pietro della Viola, a Florentine by birth,
accompanied Clara Gonzaga when she became the Duchess of Montpensier and
that he returned to Mantua in 1484--the year after "Orfeo" was probably
produced. We learn that he composed the music for the ballerino, Lorenzo
Lavagnolo, who returned to Mantua in 1485 after having been since 1479
in the service of the Duchess Bona of Savoy. We are at least free to
conjecture that before 1479 Lavagnolo trained the chorus of Mantua in
dancing so that he may have contributed something to the ballata which
we shall at the proper place see as a number in Poliziano's "Orfeo."

Travel between the courts of Mantua and Ferrara was not unfamiliar to
musicians, and there is reason to believe that those of the former court
often sought instruction from those of the latter. For example, it is on
record that Gian Andrea di Alessandro, who became organist to the
Marquis of Mantua in 1485, was sent in 1490 to Ferrara that he might
"learn better song and playing the organ from Girolamo del Bruno." In
1492 he was sufficiently instructed to be sent by the Marquis to San
Benedetto to play for the ambassador from Venice to Milan.

The celebrated composer of frottole, Bartolomeo Tromboncino, was for
some time in the service of the Mantuan court. It was formerly believed
that he went to Mantua in 1494, but Signer Bertolotti unearthed a
document which showed that his father was engaged there in 1487. From
which the learned Italian investigator reached the conclusion that the
young Tromboncino was with his parent. It seems to be pretty well
established that the two went together to Venice in 1495.

But