History of Music Publishing - Early Publishing

Early Publishing

Music publishing did not begin on a large scale until the mid-15th century, with the first printing of music. The earliest existence of printed music dates from about 1465, and then only liturgical chants were printed. This date falls shortly after the printing of the Gutenberg Bible and the invention of movable type.

Before the advent of Gutenberg and his printing press, all music was copied out by hand, an expensive and time-consuming process. Consequently, little music prior to the 16th century remains; the majority that is extant is sacred music of the Catholic Church. The priests and monks of the church spent large amounts of time painstakingly copying the chants for every day of the church year. We have very little secular music prior to 1500. The collections we do have were owned by wealthy noblemen, such as the Squarcialupi Codex, of Italian Trecento music, or the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music.

The father of modern music printing was a man named Ottaviano Petrucci, a printer and publisher who flourished in large measure thanks to a twenty-year monopoly of printed music in Venice during the 16th century. His first collection was entitled Harmonice musices odhecaton A, and contained 96 polyphonic compositions, mostly by Josquin des Prez and Heinrich Isaac. Petrucci flourished by publishing mainly Dutch language works, rather than Italian, as Flemish works were very popular throughout Europe in the Renaissance. Petrucci used a triple-impression method of printing music, in which a sheet of paper was pressed three times. The first impression was the staff lines, the second the words, and the third the notes. This method produced very clean results, though it was time-consuming and expensive.

Around 1520 in England, John Rastell developed a single-impression method for printing music. Elizabeth I granted the monopoly of music publishing to Tallis and his pupil William Byrd which ensured that their works were widely distributed and have survived in various editions, but arguably limited the potential for music publishing in Britain. This method was adopted and used widely by a Frenchman, Pierre Attaingnant. With his method, the staff lines, words, and notes were all part of a single piece of type, making it much easier to produce. However, this method produced messier results, as the staff lines often did not line up exactly and looked wavy on the page. The single-impression method eventually triumphed over Petrucci's, however, and became the dominant mode of printing until copper-plate engraving took over in the 17th century.

Read more about this topic:  History Of Music Publishing

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or publishing:

    In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    While you continue to grow fatter and richer publishing your nauseating confectionery, I shall become a mole, digging here, rooting there, stirring up the whole rotten mess where life is hard, raw and ugly.
    Norman Reilly Raine (1895–1971)