As early as the fourteenth century Bohemia had welcomed such musicians as Machaut at the court of King John. By the sixteenth century a large number of songbooks were published whose popularity spread into the Bohemian border lands of Germany and Hungary, and Prague became the imperial residence of Emperor Rudolf II. The city became an important centre for the outstanding musicians of the day and began to coordinate its musical life with Vienna and the German capitals. By the turn of the eighteenth century a major contribution to Austro-German musical literature had been made by Bohemian composers.