1463—Siena, Italy

A letter from the Palace wind band members to the Concistoro requests an indirect salary raise: “To our Magnificent and most powerful lords a humble supplication on behalf of your faithful servants, the pifferi and trombone, who having considered their great poverty and misery, and the necessity of providing for their poor families, and having seen that they have no earnings nor provision other than the one they receive from this magnificent Palace, and aware that they have left their own countries and all paternal affection so that they might serve your hallowed Palace, in the service of which they wish always to live and die, beg that it please your most clement lordships to remove the tax [on their salaries], and the portion that has been imposed for the tower that is to be built, [just] as your lordships have deigned to exempt your ushers.” (Despite their claim of “great poverty and misery,” the wind band musicians are relatively well off for their time. Records show, for example, that they are paid better than the palace trumpeters, and many of them own their own homes and vineyards) (D’Accone, Civic Muse 532, 541).