1     The full text of Trithemius's notice is given in Woodley 1981: 247.

2     For the sake of financial comparison here, this sum was the same as the assessment of each of the thirty prebends at St Vincent's, Soignies, being considerably more lucrative, therefore, than even the most valuable prebends at Condé-sur-l'Escaut (25 livres tournois), a little more lucrative than St Géry, Cambrai (42 livres tournois), which was second in that city only to Cambrai Cathedral itself (85 livres 9 sous) (Noble 1976: 86–8).

3     See especially Noble 1976: 83–4. Rembert was also the recipient in the 1470s of a verse letter from Johannes Cornuel, seeking Rembert's help in obtaining benefices: see Reynolds 1995: 127, n. 47.

4     In Woodley 1981: 237, I assumed that the document's date of 27 February 1490 needed to be corrected to 1491 new style, but Richard Sherr kindly pointed out later (Sherr 1994: 70) that, whilst papal bulls were dated according to a year beginning on 25 March, the financial records of the Apostolic Chamber were dated according to a year beginning 25 December. The marginal record of Rembert having paid the annate for Tinctoris's benefice should therefore remain as 1490 for modern purposes.

5     This synopsis, with the following paragraph, is taken partly from Muret 1998: 91–110, together with the predecessor and satellite AEB inventaries and further bibliography quoted therein. Other valuable (if by now almost antiquarian) material can be gleaned from Tarlier and Wauters 1862; Fréson 1890; and Lemaire 1848. The cult of St Gertrude at Nivelles is usefully studied, with some particularly valuable illustrations, in Collet 1985.

6     Tarlier and Wauters 1862: 98–9; the date of 1372 given in Muret 1998: 91 appears to be an error. According to the old statutes of the male chapter, a newly admitted canon was required to be in holy orders and to reside in Nivelles (cf. n. 15 below). Upon his reception, having sworn obedience to the statutes, he was obliged to make donations of two aimes of best wine, five Rhenish florins for the church fabric, three florins for the church of St Paul, one gelte of wine for the clerk or secretary of the chapter, the same for the guardian of the canonesses' dormitory, the same for the churchwarden of St Paul, two florins and one gelte for the bâtonnier (chief legal adviser?) of the church, and one English gold noble for the common purse of the secondary churches in the diocese of Liège (Tarlier and Wauters 1862: 98).

7     The older secondary literature makes occasional mention of a maître de chant, four vicars (choral?) and eight choristers at St Gertrude's (e.g. Tarlier and Wauters 1862: 99), though the primary sources have yet to yield further information on what would be a valuable addition to our knowledge of the musical environment there. (See also n. 14 below.) One certainly cannot rule out the possibility that T's earliest musical training was at St Gertrude's, though St Vincent's, Soignies must also be regarded as a strong contender. Georges Lecocq, of the Musée communal in Nivelles, has recently kindly drawn my attention to an early reference to a 'mesire Jehan le Taintenier' appearing in Nivelles on 4 February 1454 as procurator for one Piérart Remi in the matter of the administration of goods (cited in Goffin 1959: 238). Goffin's genealogical researches in the Nivelles archives leads him to conclude that the theorist Tinctoris was a son, known as Hanekinet, of Colart Tickart dit le Tintenier, by his second wife Marie de la Houssière, daughter of Henri dit 'dou Cokelet', innkeeper of Nivelles. According to Goffin, this family nexus would have given Tinctoris two siblings, a brother Henry (Henrion) and a sister Mariette (probably died December 1451), as well as a half-sister Margrite (Goffin 1959: 237–8). Tinctoris supposed father Colart was, in turn, son of Jehan Trikart or Tickart, dit le Tintenier, who also had a daughter Catheline, known as 'le Tinteneresse' (Goffin 1959: 237). However, Tinctoris himself (or more precisely the person who acted as 'editor' of the printed extracts: probably Matthias Moravus the printer) informs us in the prefatory letter to his treatise De inventione et usu musice that his father's name was Martin (Weinmann 1961: 28), drawing on what was presumably the dedication of Tinctoris's intact treatise; Goffin's genealogy, therefore, seems terminally flawed. Nevertheless, the reference to the 1454 procuratorship of Jehan le Taintenier, cited above, need not be the same person as the Hanekinet Tickart, as Goffin presumes; so, especially if we were to allow for a slightly earlier birth-date for Tinctoris as has been generally assumed (cf. Woodley 2007a: n. 65), it is not impossible that this is a very early sighting of the theorist on his home territory.

8     See especially Spufford 1986: Index, s.v. 'patard' and 'stuiver'; also, for wider context, Spufford 1988 and Spufford 1970.

9     To provide some idea of comparative value, we might note Peter Spufford's comment that 'In Flanders, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the patard was worth 2 gros. A priest there could then hope to be paid 2 patards or 3 gros for singing a mass.' (Spufford 1988: 325).

10    The very first page of MS 30.072 gives a fuller version of the wording 'cest icy en la part de messires', of which all subsequent entries 'a messires' must presumably be read as an abbreviation.

11    The most valuable study of obit commemorations in the Netherlands of the late Middle Ages, especially as relevant to musicology, is Haggh 1988: esp. i. 354–79, which contains much fascinating detail of individual obit foundations.

12    Although it is true that interest in the modern sense was not generally available, economic historians of the period make a distinction between categories such as predetermined interest per se on a loan, which as usury was regarded as contrary to canon and civil law; fees, damages or premiums charged on loans or money exchanges; and 'investing' a deposit in such a way as to create additional value (see, for instance, Munro 1979: 169–71; Blomquist 1979: 73–5; Prestwich 1979: 84–7; Riu 1979: 136–9; and Udonovitch 1979: 256–61). Exactly how an institution such as St Gertrude's – closely woven as it was, by dint of its highly secularised personnel, into the economic and mercantile communities around it – handled its revenues in this respect is beyond the scope of this article to explore.

13    For the wider context of music manuscript production at the Habsburg-Burgundian court during De Orto's time, see especially Bouckaert and Schreurs 2003.

14    De Orto had built his own house on the Rue de Halle [Sainte-Anne], close to St Gertrude's; see Lemaire 1848: 152. Close to this road, between the Rue Sainte-Anne and the Rue des Prêtres, was the Rue des Choraux, on which once had been sited a house that was used as a choir-school for the boys of St Gertrude; see Tarlier and Wauters 1862: 9 and n. 7 above.

15    The regulation of 1372 (cf. text to n. 6 above), establishing the seven sacerdotal prebends among the thirty male canons, also stipulated that no canon should be absent from Nivelles for more than three months per year (Tarlier and Wauters 1862: 99), but clearly the force of this regulation had diminished considerably by the end of the fifteenth century.

16    In this regard, one specifically musicological issue still to be resolved is the nature of Petrucci's source for Tinctoris's probably late, accomplished four-voiced setting of the Lamentations, printed in Lamentationum Jeremie prophete liber primus (Venice, 8 April 1506). Stanley Boorman's recent, superb Catalogue raisonné of Petrucci's output suggests that the music for this, and the subsequent Lamentationum liber secundus of 29 May 1506, came via the Dominican friar and singer Petrus Castellanus, who was probably originally from near Ancona but resident at the church of SS. Giovanni e Paulo in Venice at least since 1486 (Boorman 2006: 33, 291–3, 619–30). Clearly, especially if the composition of Tinctoris's work post-dates his departure from Naples, as it may, further evidence for Petrucci's or Castellanus's manuscript sources could prove extremely valuable.