Once the object of intense musicological debate, the choirbook of early sixteenth-century motets commonly known as the Medici Codex has received little attention in recent years. But a closer look at it suggests the need for reappraisal of some important points. In particular, the widely shared view of the manuscript as a work conceived and executed for the wedding of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and the French noblewoman Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne at Blois in May 1518 does not withstand scrutiny. An analysis of the scribal hands and other physical features indicates, rather, that production of the manuscript began independently of the wedding and possibly well before 1518, and that only a last-minute decision turned it into a gift for the couple—not, however, for the ceremony in France but for the their entry into Florence some four months later. This revised history sets the political background of the codex into sharper relief, in particular clarifying its role as a token of the dynastic ambitions harbored by Lorenzo's uncle, Pope Leo X.

Recent developments in the biography of Josquin des Prez have focused new attention on the motet Ave Maria …… virgo serena . In 1974, Thomas Noblitt showed that watermark evidence assigned a copy of the piece in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Mus. ms. 3154 to 1476; the dating appeared unassailable philologically, and the style of the music tied it to a repertory created at the court of Milan in a period when Josquin supposedly worked there. But with the discovery by Lora Matthews and Paul Merkley that Josquin had no connection with Milan until 1484, a potential conflict between style, date, and perhaps authorship has emerged. Reexamination of the motet and its transmission affirms both the Milanese character of the music and Josquin's authorship; a more intensive investigation of the relationship between script and paper in Munich 3154, however, shows that the Ave Maria represents a previously unrecognized phase in the work of its copyist, datable to 1485 or an adjacent year. Even against this revised background, Munich 3154 remains the earliest securely datable source for any music of Josquin, and the Ave Maria seems in all likelihood the earliest composition of his that we can identify.