From the Composer's Preface

‎"20th March 1599

Could there be a greater waste of your precious time than to watch a grown man waste his prime of life, his pitiful fortune and the lamp oil of the Blessed Holy Church counterfeiting this collection of diverse songs and simply pleasant melodies? A cat has the common sense to get down from its perch after a night of meowing to dine on a rat or a fish. Nonetheless I, here at the end of my life it seems, cannot restrain my mind from the present task of setting down in writing my little ditties for the good of posterity--what vanity! I can think of nothing more hateful than the so-called critic who, once decided, will brave Hell itself to establish a work as a masterpiece. For him, no evidence, either positive or negative, can turn bold men from their enlightened mission of rescuing such and such a work from deserts of obscurity. Let us recall the famous Certon and his Parisian sorority of shrill theoreticians, who thieve forgotten works from the great libraries of France in order to hide them like squirrels in their own basements, only to sell them back to the Crown, onc their reputation has been established within Music (in boldface, as it must be!). Allegri himself (and I knew him) always sold his stocks at a higher price than the market could manage, having sidled up to the advisors/goat herders of the Vatican so much and so well that they forbade that his Miserere Nostri ever be..."

 

‎"...released from the Sistine, not a single note (not even a single sigh!), assuring its renown in our time and for centuries to come, benefitting not from his authority as a musician or scholar, but instead from his qualities as a businessman and merchant. Tallis, as for him, had the smarts to persuade the English Crown to accord him the exclusive right to sell staff paper. Londonian musical industry, whether it be Tallis or his fellow musicians, or his rivals, could do nothing but profit our man alone, without regard to his compositional talents. Well played, Thomas! Even the most infamous do-nothing could manage to collect an incalculable fortune under such occult conditions. I tremble with anger when I think of those charlatans at whom I bite my thumb, and challenge them to rescue THIS inept randomized stack from the abyss of oblivion, this stack you now hold between your hands. I could nonetheless not burn it like so much dry grass; they are, after all, passably useful songs for Divine Service and for minor comfort to the soul. I decided therefore to bury this collection under the phantasmagorical works of my friend, which I caused to be printed to this end since, knowing [that in] the old trivium and quadrivium of olden times, the pursuit of the polyphonic arts was nothing if not the study of simultaneities properly comparable to the discipline of the astronomer..."