Significance
A total of 61 music publications by Petrucci are known. By far the most fruitful period of his life for publishing music was the period between 1501 and 1509, during which he published the three volumes of chansons (the Odhecaton being the first), 16 books of masses, five books of motets, 11 anthologies of frottole and six books of music for lute. The last publication is dated 1520.
Petrucci was not the first music printer in Europe – a number of liturgical works with woodcut music were printed before 1500, with the first, the Constance Gradual, printed about 1473, and works using movable type were printed beginning with Ulrich Han's Missale Romanum in 1476. He was, however, the first to print in quantity and the first to print polyphonic music, and the quality of his printings was outstanding.
Petrucci's technique required three impressions; each sheet of music would be run through the presses once for the staves, once for the music, and once for the words. Petrucci was highly successful at this enterprise; his publications are quite exact and beautifully executed. However, other printers using this method sometimes offset their prints slightly, which could result in notes being printed too high or too low on the staff – and thus jarringly incorrect for performers. Petrucci's method was soon superseded by the innovations attributed to Pierre Attaignant, who developed and popularized the single-impression method of printing in 1528.
The printing of music made possible the development of the first truly international musical style since the unification of Gregorian Chant in the 9th century. Printed music moved around Europe during the migration of Franco-Flemish composers from their home areas in the modern day Low Countries to Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland and elsewhere; the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish became an international language, with later regional variations.
Read more about this topic: Ottaviano Petrucci
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