Only a few urban historians will fully understand Suzanne Getz's technical discussion of musical scores, but all will appreciate her attempt to recognize the role of music in shaping urban life in sixteenth-century Milan, in line with the most recent interdisciplinary developments reviewed in the special issue of Urban History, 29, 1 (2002). Music accompanied baptisms and funerals; it marked the celebration of victories and the entries of royalty and their representatives; it resonated in churches. Music helped rote learning in the schools of Christian doctrine but it also embellished profane entertainments, such as banquets and dancing, and it accompanied carnival amusements, revels, jousts and theatre. The political authorities and some lay confraternities devoted a section of their budgets to music, while ecclesiastical institutions endowed special benefices for the maintenance of musicians. Some of the latter worked for public institutions, at court and in churches, but they also appeared at independently contracted private parties and worked as private teachers or as occasional performers in inns.

Through rich archival research, Getz succeeds in illuminating a diverse world of lutenists, gambists, trumpeters (including those accompanying town-criers), pifferi, organists, drummers as well as dance masters – there were fewer singers, because in Milan instrumentalists were expected to sing. She describes the musicians' salaries and careers, and in the appendix provides a substantial list, together with the transcripts of relevant documents. Sometimes positions constituted mere sinecures for the well connected, but mostly musicians were admitted to particular posts through an arduous process of selection. Living in physical proximity with the authorities, some musicians also worked as trusted diplomatic couriers and one, Pietro Paolo Borrono, may have earned more as a spy than composing lute music. Study of dedicatees in printed music books illustrates networks of patronage tying musicians to the urban establishment as well as to elites beyond it. Finally, Getz fully inserts music in the urban space in which it was performed, although she does not elaborate on her suggestion that ceremonial moved away from the Castello court towards public places.

The book's preponderant theme concerns the non-musical uses of music as a weapon of persuasion at a time of heavy political tensions, between the defeat of the French, the short-lived Sforza restoration of 1522–35 and the full establishment of Spanish rule. The meaning of musical performances depends on ascertaining which music was actually played at which events, which is never easy. But, by juxtaposing chronicles with a variety of sources such as imprese and apparati, Getz formulates intriguing hypotheses about the message which music was meant to impart during public events. Francesco II Sforza celebrated his (or rather his allies') victories as a means of legitimating his sovereignty in the face of heavy opposition. After his death, the Habsburgs celebrated the inclusion of Milan in their empire, thus engendering a tension between local and imperial themes. Amongst Milan's governors, one (Cardinal Caracciolo) regarded music as a frivolity to be trimmed from the budget, but others (such as Alfonso d'Avalos and especially Ferrante Gonzaga) were esteemed patrons of music. Most systematically of all, it was Carlo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan from 1560 to 1584, who put music to use in his religious and ecclesiastical reforms, a second and connected theme of the book which has already received the attention of such scholars as Lewis Lockwood, Iain Fenlon and Robert Kendrick. Borromeo, whose preoccupation with order and decorum went as far as regulating the boys' placement upon the choir steps, commanded music as a means of inspiring piety and reinforcing the post-Tridentine mixture of discipline and devotion. Getz explores the ensuing competition between sacred and secular music, although she neglects the competition between different conceptions of sacred music (as perceived, notably, in Rome or Bologna as opposed to Milan).

One of the strengths, and novelties, of this book is in its detailed reconstruction of the practical organization of musical institutions, but does Getz succeed in describing music as ‘collective experience’? There is no doubt that music occasionally bound large crowds together. Such is the case of the religious processions which marched through the city singing the litanies before entering a church to attend a sung mass. On the patron-saint's day, participants joined in the singing by dividing into three choirs. Such occasions were announced by trumpeters for days, and saluted by loud artillery volleys (though these were ditched as too profane by Borromeo). Because the entire city was supposed to participate, no work was allowed, heads of families were forcefully recruited and local residents were made to clear the streets along the procession's route. And yet we know little of just how inclusive that experience was. While the ducal or gubernatorial retinue sat inside Santa Maria della Scala, a church rich with aristocratic connections and governmental subsidies, the population processed out in the open air. Getz repeatedly argues that music ‘showed little respect for class distinctions’, but she does not support such bold claims with any social or professional analysis. What was the composition of the lay societies sponsoring such singing as the daily Ave Maria laude in the Duomo? Gianmarco Burigozzi (sic for Burigozzo), whose chronicle Getz often cites, was not a historian (p. 40), but a merchant, and we would like to know more about his peers, as well as the many other tradesmen and artisans who populated the city. We are never told just how large Milan was, or what were the pillars of its remarkably successful economy. The preface states that sixteenth-century Milan was marked by heavy social movement, but the book adds little in that way, and Getz never stops to consider the fact that the city grew from about 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants in the period which she covers. Furthermore, while it is not equally easy to reconstruct the experience of music at all social levels, at least some consideration could have been given to widely circulating printed material such as songs and rhymes. Getz makes admirable use of police records in discussing episodes in some musicians' lives, but she could have drawn more from them to reconstruct musical events staged outside the court or the churches. On the basis of her discussion, it is unclear how we can speak of a ‘modern civic identity’ based on music when we know so little about the actual performance of music and its reception.