Using as an example a single twenty-minute composition – Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda (1624) by Claudio Monteverdi – this book attempts to draw attention to the problematic nature and the multiplicity of semantic layering of the period around the year 1600. The terms Mannerism and Baroque are of key importance for this analysis; the author understands these terms as being unstable, interchangeable, and mutually overlapping. In particular, the term Mannerism is often the subject matter of frequent discussion not limited to the field of musicology.