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Jaap van Benthem, The wedding of the century, Munich 1568, Early Music, Volume 44, Issue 3, 1 August 2016, Page 505, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caw069
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Since 2001 the annual TroJa meetings, a series founded by the Institut für Alte Musik der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen, have provided a forum to discuss the latest research into music of the 15th and 16th centuries. The 15th annual meeting, held on 21–3 April 2016 at the invitation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, focused on a single choir book from the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Mus. Hs. 2129, copied in 1568 in Munich for the wedding between the future Wilhelm V of Bavaria and Renata of Lorraine. The manuscript, copied on 15 folios, resulted from the unique co-operation between the court poet Nicolaus Stopius, the composer and leader of the court capella Orlande de Lassus and the singer-illustrator Richard von Genua; it includes Lassus’s wedding motet Gratia sola Dei.
Paving the way for art historians and musicologists to unveil relevant insights into the manuscript’s iconographic and musical components, the meeting opened with introductions to the challenge of understanding the various levels of interaction between text, image, musical notation and musical sound, all telling the same story. As a counterpoint, there followed a detailed analysis of the wedding’s political background, and a description of the elaborate and even exuberant festivities and tournaments that established the reputation of Bavaria’s ruling Wittelsbach dynasty.
