The Feast of San Rocco, Venice: 1608.(Roland Wison, Giovanni Gabrieli, Alessandro Grandi, Bartolomeo Barbarino, Giovanni Paolo Cima, David Bryant, Musica Fiata Koln)

Reconstructing specific Venetian ceremonies in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods seems to have become something of a fad: witness the Gabrieli Consort and Players' re-creation of the visit of the Japanese princes in 1585, or the Taverner Consort, Choir and Players' `Mass of Thanksgiving' on the cessation of the plague in Venice in 1631. One can see the attractions: in Venice, music and ceremonial were always interlinked in powerful civic rituals, and there are enough documentary and practical sources to give such exercises both musical interest and scholarly respectability. These sources also seem to get us closer to how things `really were' in an exciting time of experiment and innovation

Of course, that begs a number of questions. The notion that Venetian …