IV—
Italian Music Incunabula

Early printers had at least five options for the printing of music books First, they could omit music and space for it altogether Second, printers could leave, often above printed lines of text that was to be sung, blank space for later manuscript insertion of staves and notes Of the 156 Italian music incunabula, thirty-five follow that prescription (see Table II), including the first four that were printed (D 38-D 4 i) While most of the thirty-five appeared in the i47os and I48os, printers without music type or without type of the appropriate size for small formats continued the practice into the I49os (D 32, D 9 i) A third option, printing staves and omitting notes, was selected for nineteen Italian incunabula (see Table 12) The quality of the printed staves ranges from miserable to excellent; techniques run the gamut from woodcuts and poorly beaten rules to cast metal lines the width of a staff and, finally, cast small metal segments of one line each Poorly printed staves precluded properly printed notes, so that printers experienced with music type rarely risked using wavy, irregular materials for printing staves A small group of twelve incunabula, nine of which are music theory texts, employed a fourth option, notes and staves printed from woodcuts (Table I5) Finally, the largest group, seventy-six music incunabula, are printed from thirty-eight music types with both notes and staves.

Space for Music

Few printers chose the option of omitting music and space for it entirely Admittedly, it is difficult to identify editions that eliminated the music of a copytext from print, but any missal printed without music can probably be placed in that category.' The two modest octavo missals printed in Italy without space for music may have been aimed at readers unable to write music or too poor to hire someone who could One of these was printed in Venice in 1481 by Franz Renner, a printer who never did attempt to print music The Florence copy (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, K.7.53) has no added manuscript leaves, and the copy at Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 8° Inc.c.a.9) has an added twenty-four manuscript leaves without chant, but the owner of at least one copy (British Library, IA 19880) inserted before the Canon ten manuscript leaves with text and roman chant notation to replace the four printed leaves (ff m4-m7) he felt must have music There was obviously a market for a small, inexpensive missal printed without space for music, but at least this owner of such a book felt the lack keenly enough to redo a gathering The three folio missals printed by Pachel and Scinzenzeller before I483 had included space for music, but their 1483 octavo missal excluded music.

The absence of music in printed breviaries follows the tradition of manuscript breviaries of the last decades of the fifteenth century The list of fifteenth-century printed Italian breviaries in the i The Glagolitic Missale Romanum of 1483 is an exception Its lack of music probably reflects the state of the copytext, since liturgical music for the Slavonic service has a performance tradition that is still transmitted orally today See Josip Andreis, Music in Croatia, trans Vladimir Ivir (Zagreb: Institute of Musicology, 1974), p 19-

Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke includes none with printed music, and only one (dated 29 Sept 1492) was found with blank space for music (Table i I, D 32) No music types smaller than octavo format were cut in the fifteenth century and most printed breviaries were in smaller formats Many more printers of music books in Italy chose the second option, adhering to scribal tradition by leaving space for the rubrics, initials, and music that would have been assigned to professional rubricators, illuminators, and music scribes rather than text scribes Books with space for music were printed in locations in which music types of the right size were not yet available The exception (D 32) also exists in a state with printed staves, suggesting that more than one printer was involved in the production The single folio format book with space for music from Rome was printed before 1476, when large music type first appeared there; most such books (eleven) were issued in Milan in the first decade of printing, before music type was available in the city In Venice eleven such books were published before their printers owned appropriate music type.2 Four examples were produced in Naples before its first music type appeared about I490 The printers who issued such missals in Verona, Messina, and Turin did not attempt to print more than one The genre had become commercially viable only in the hands of specialists at centers of printing with international distribution facilities.

The first printed books to leave space for music were prepared for buyers accustomed to the manuscript tradition that saved rubrics, initials, staves and notes, and illumination to be added after the textual scribe had completed his task Indeed, the large amount of handwork required for such additions resulted in printed missals that can easily be mistaken for manuscripts The Franciscan monks for whom the first printed Missale Romanum (Central Italy? ca 1472, D 38) was intended may have requested an edition that left to the scriptorium the task of adding rubrics and chant The missal exists in two issues which survive in unique, richly illuminated vellum copies One, from a Benedictine monastery near Spoleto, now belongs to the Newberry Library, Chicago; the other is one of five printed books in the Duke of Urbino's library of manuscripts now in the Vatican Library About one-third of the Newberry copy is left blank for extensive rubrics, initials of major, middle, and minor size, a Crucifixion illumination, and music on forty-seven pages In the Vatican copy, much of the rubrication is printed A casual viewer of the books would judge them to be manuscripts; the Duke of Urbino's copy remained undisturbed in the manuscript section of the Vatican Library until recently, and the Newberry copy was described as a manuscript in an inventory at its purchase The second printed missal, with rubrics for a nonmonastic audience, was produced in the urban environment of Milan by a publishing group apparently motivated by profit.3 The Missale Romanum was printed by Antonio Zarotto in I474 without a

red impression, leaving space for rubrics, initials, staves and notes, and illumination Only on the incipit leaf did Zarotto add a second impression in red, but in a fashion that showed him to be an accomplished technician The omissions would have saved money for the producers of the book by leaving to the purchaser the cost of finishing it by hand The first missal for the Milanese Ambrosian rite was also printed by Zarotto, in 1475, again with space for textual rubrics, music, initials, and Crucifixion (Figs I4-I5) Zarotto's Ambrosian copytexts would have followed a tradition of two-colored staves, a red line for fa and a yellow line for ut or C; the copy of his I475 Missale Ambrosianum in Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Fig 14) contains inserted music written on two lines drawn in colors, and the copy at the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris (Fig i5) has rastral staves on which the red line for fa has been darkened and a yellow line for ut has been drawn in Early printers of music apparently never attempted printing a yellow

line on a staff In Milan, where the tradition remained strong, no music was printed until the 148os and then only on the easier, red staves None of the printers who issued books with blank space for music did so after acquiring a font of appropriate music type That a lack of technical 2 Since Beretta is known to have used Venice as a false imprint, 1) 32 may be from his home, Pavia For controversy over the place, printer, and date of D 7 1, see Part III 3 Ganda, I primordi della tipografia milanese, chap ii, "La ricerca di un nuovo mercato: i libri liturgici," pp 59-66.

Table I 1 Italian incunabula with space for music Date Author, Title Place: Printer Format M-B W D [ca 14721 Missale Romanum [Central Italy?] 2 38 6 XII 474 Missale Romanum Milan: Zarotto 2° 852 39 23 III 1475 Missale Ambrosianum Milan: Zarotto 2° 26 23 21 IV 1475 Missale Romanum Rome: Han 2 853 40 26 IV 1476 Missale Romanum Milan: Zarotto 20 1 8 854 41 20 IX 1477 Missale Romanum Venice: Siliprandi 2° 120 856 43 io XII 1477 Officium Imm Concept Rome: Han 4 144 BVM I477 Missale Romanum Naples: Moravus 2° 121 857 44 17 I 1478 Missale Romanum Milan: Zarotto 2 858 45 22 IV 1479 Missale Romanum Milan: [Carcano] 4° 46 i V I479 Missale Romanum Venice: [Jenson] 2° 122 859 47 27 IX 1479 Missale Romanum Milan: Zarotto 2° 123 860 48 16 XII 1479 Missale Romanum Milan: Pachel & 2° 49 Scinzenzeller 27 VIII 1480 Missale Ultramontanorum Verona: [Maufer] 2 I607 127 27 VIII 1480 Missale Strigoniense Verona: [Maufer] 2° 1488a 127 (reissue) 1480 Missale Messanense Messina: Aiding 2° 592 33 31 VII 1480 Missale Romanum Milan: Pachel & 40 124 864 50 Scinzenzeller 23 VIII I480 Missale Romanum Venice: Joh von Koln, 2 865 5i Joh Manthen 8 X 1480 Gaffurio, Theorica Naples: F di Dino 80-— 14 31 VIII 1481 Missale Romanum Venice: Torti 2° 866 52 18 IX 1481 Missale Romanum Milan: Pachel & 4 867 53 Scinzenzeller

8 XI 1481 Missale Romanum Milan: Zarotto 2° 868 54 29 XII I481 Missale Romanum Venice: Scoto 8° 125-26 870 55 16 III 1482 Missale Romanum Naples: Moravus 2° 873 57 2 VII 1482 Missale Romanum Venice: Blavi, Torresani, 4 874 58 & Salodio 1482 Missale Praedicatorum Milan: Zarotto 2° 211 132 29 III 1483 Missale Praedicatorum Naples: Moravus 4° 213 i816 133 [ca 1483] Missale Toletanum [Venice: s.t.] 2° 1529 26 [ca 1485-1490] Missale Romanum [Venice? s.t.] 2° I67 953 7I i VIII 1486 Missale Ambrosianum Milan: Pachel 2° 28 25 28 IV 1486 Magnificat Milan: Zarotto 4° 24 2 [2 leaves] 1487 Missale Romanum Venice: Frankfurt 8° 137 900 74 29 IX 1492a Missale Clarimontense Venice: Beretta 8° 58 277 32 25 XII 1492 Breviarium Praedicatorum Venice: Emerich 16° LB36o 7 II IX 1492 Missale Romanum [Turin? Suigo & 8° 148 921 91 Benedicti?] 5 VI 1492 Caza, Trattato Milan: Pachel 4° 9 a Also exists in copies with printed staves.

FIG 14 Missale Ambrosianum Milan: Antonio Zarotto, 23 III 1475, f [CVIII] (Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, S.P.II.22.) material was the reason for the blank space in Han's Missale Romanum of 20 April 1475 is indicated by the appearance of an almost identical book on 12 December 1476 with printed notes and staves instead, and an altered colophon proclaiming it to be "with music, which had never been done before." A comparison of the two editions at the Biblioteca Vaticana revealed that the preliminary signature (the calendar) is identical, the text of the incipit has been reset but is nearly identical, and the number of pages containing music is the same, with one exception On f m3v of the 1476 edition there is no music because the compositor managed to fit the one sung word on f m3 Both editions, furthermore, contain a leaf with either too many music staves or too much space for them The near-identity of the editions suggests that the 1475 edition was carefully designed to include the music that did not appear in print until the second edition, eighteen months later The design and creation of the first Italian music type and staff material may have taken longer than planned.

FIG 15 Missale Ambrosianum Milan: Antonio Zarotto, 23 III 1475, f [xlvi] (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Res B 1485.) Some books with space for music have had staff lines so skillfully drawn by a raster that they have been mistaken for print The three copies I examined of the I477 missal printed by Moravus in Naples have rastral staves, though the book was described by Meyer-Baer as having printed staves Moravus's second printed missal of 1482 is correctly described by Meyer-Baer as having space for music, but again his Missale Ordinis Praedicatorum is described as containing printed staves when in fact in the two copies I examined they were drawn See Fig i6, especially col 2, staff 8, and Fig 17, especially col i, staves 2-3 (note the three-line raster) for the telltale hesitation at the beginning of the staves where the raster first touches the paper Incunabula that contain manuscript music provide a valuable record of printers' first designs for pages of music as well as examples of the scribal tradition at the moment of transition from manuscript to printed book Several major music printers began their involvement with music by issuing works with space for music, and the decisions made

in those books about the relationship of text lines to staves were often retained in their books with music printed from type Some of the earliest printed books with music (both copies of the ca 1472 Missale Romanum, Zarotto's 1475 Missale Ambrosianum, Moravus's 1477 Missale Romanum) contained two-, three-, and four-line staves that varied according to the melodies to be written on them; two and three-line staves, and variation for the ambitus of the melody were eliminated by printers, as was the two-line red and yellow staff of Ambrosian chant Although they contain no printed music, the first printed books to include music resolved problems of book design critical to the next steps of printing staves and cutting music type.

FIG i6 Missale Romanum Naples: Matthias Moravus, 1477, f [106] (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, 2° L impr membr 62.)

FIG 17 Missale Ordinis Praedicatorum Naples: Matthias Moravus, 29 III 1483, f [37] (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Velins 1704.)

Printed Staves

Another group of Italian incunabula were printed without notes but with staves for music (see Table 12) The fact that two of these exist also in a state with printed notes suggests collaboration between printers, possibly in different shops Some of the imprint names listed with the books in Table 12 may be publishers' rather than printers': Frankfurt is not known to have been a printer, and Sessa was probably not one either; Scoto called himself a publisher after 1484, but may have been a printer before that year If these three were not printers, the only Venetian printers known to have used rules for printing staves are Paltasichi, Ratdolt, and Hamman Paltasichi was printing in Venice in I475, Ratdolt in 1478, and Hamman in 1482; any of them could have printed the rules in the books of Scoto and Frankfurt (the rules in Scoto's books were printed along with the text) Since Paltasichi was working For Scoto in 1480 and 1481 and did print his own edition of a missal with ruled staves, he may well have been the printer responsible for the two editions of Scoto listed in Table 12 Several techniques were available for printing staves: rules (type-high strips of metal) of a relatively soft metal alloy; cast metal lines a column wide (probably single lines); smaller cast segments of one to four lines, a number of which together made up the width of a column; short cast metal

segments of a single line nested irregularly to make up a staff line; and woodblocks.4 When joints on all staff lines consistently occur at the same place between segments, it is impossible to know whether the segments are single lines or are cast multiples of two or four lines The use of ledger lines above and below the staff in Emerich's R2I proves that cast single lines were available for that font; a four-line segment the size of that staff (32 mm) would be unmanageable in a handheld mold The techniques for printed staves are not chronologically sequential, but the use of rules does disappear after I49I (see Table 2) and nested small segments do not appear until the late I490s That the music printer did not store material for staves in his cases of music type is demonstrated in the earliest extant cases of music type at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp This practice was logical if the staves were set and locked up in forms without music characters, which would later be printed in black in a second impression The technique chosen for printing staves would have depended on the material available to a printer, which included the adjustable handheld metal mold cased in wood, larger metal or stone molds, woodcuts, and brass rules.5 Several of the books printed with staves and without notes were apparently prepared in this way

because they were intended for an audience accustomed to gothic plainchant notation The publication by Emerich of three missals for Hungary with printed staves but without notes in 1498, I499, and I500 (1502?) at a time when he owned two fonts of roman plainchant type, was probably due to his awareness of the geographical limits of the use of roman plainchant notation There are certainly fifteenth-century chant manuscripts in the Budapest Szechenyi National Library in both gothic and roman plainchant notation, but all copies I examined of the missals for Gran printed by Emerich had manuscript gothic chant notation added to the printed staves, as did those in Ratdolt's 1486 missal for Gran The Hungarian publisher from Buda, Johann Paep, may well have advised his Venetian printer to print gothic notation or none at all It 4 Previous discussions of the technology for printing music staves mention cast staves in blocks of metal or separate lengths of rule (Alexander Hyatt King, Four Hundred Years of Music Printing [London: British Museum, I968], p 9) or rules

and woodblocks (Maria Przywecka-Samecka, "Problematik des Musiknotendruckes in der Inkunabelzeit," Gutenberg-Jahrbuch [I978]: 55) Meyer-Baer's description of methods (Liturgical Music Incunabula, p xxvi) adds a technique of "double rules recognizable by the curves occurring often in two lines at the same spot," which I have been unable to recognize in printed examples 5 See the 1580 illustration of stone slab molds in Cyril Stanley Smith, "Metallurgy and Assaying," A History of Technology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 3: 38 For brass rules see, for example, Ratdolt's 1480 edition of Rolewinck's Fasciculus Temporum, plate 23 in Ferdinand Geldner's Die deutschen Inkunabeldrucker (Stuttgart: A Hiersemann, 1968).

Table 12 Italian incunabula with printed staves but no notes Date Author, Title Place: Printer Format M-B W D Metal rules12 V 1482 Ramis de Pareja, Musica Bologna: Hyrberia and 4 150 Utriusque Cantus Heinrich von Koln Practica VI 1482 Ramis de Pareja, Musica Bologna: Hyrberia 4° - i5 Utriusque Cantus Practica 28 XI I482a Missale Romanum Venice: Scoto 4 127 877 62 24 XII 1482 Missale Ord. Praedicatorum Venice: Scoto 4 2I2 i8i5 131 1484 Missale Ord. Praedicatorum Venice: Frankfurt 8° 214 I8I7 I34 27 IX I484a Missale Romanum Venice: Paganini & 2 132 889 67 Arrivabene 1484 Missale Romanum Venice: Frankfurt 8° - 892 68 I II 485-I486 Missale Romanum Venice: Paltasichi 8° 136 896 72 i8 III 1486 Missale Strigoniense Venice: Ratdolt 2° 492 121 Io XI 1487 Missale Parisiense Venice: Hamman & 8° 97 700 35 Emerich 1487 Missale Romanum Venice: Frankfurt 8° 137 9°o 74 6 VI 1491 Missale Romanum Pavia: Girardengo & 80 I45 916 86 Beretta Cast metal 14 III 1490 Missale Burgense Venice: Hamman 2° 3 31 X 1495 Missale Strigoniense Venice: Emerich 4° - 496 I23

23 I I495-1496 Agenda Aquileiensis Venice: Hamman 4 31 VII 1498 Liber Catechumeni Venice: Sessa 80 - LB725 19 26 II I498-I499 Missale Strigoniense Venice: Emerich 2° i89 1498 124 24 IV 1499 Missale Quinque Ecclesiae Venice: Emerich 4 - 804 36 31 III 1500 or Missale Strigoniense Venice: [Emerich] 4 90 I499 125 I IV 1502 Also exists in a variant state with printed staves and printed notes. would be interesting to know the reception accorded the folio Missale Strigoniense printed by Hamman in 1494 with roman plainchant. The absence of notes in Hamman's Agenda Aquileiensis, at a time when he owned at least two fonts of roman music type but before he used his gothic plainchant font, indicates that the common notation in the Patriarchal See of Aquila was gothic. Although the town of Aquila is only a few miles north of Venice, its territory extended into Yugoslavia, Austria, and over to Como at the end of the fifteenth century.6

The Missale Praedicatorum of 1484, the first of four octavo missals published by Frankfurt in the i48os, was issued with printed staves and without notes. Of the two copies I examined, the copy at the 6. Spessot, "Libri liturgici aquileiesi," pp. 77-92; see also Archibald King, Liturgies of the Past (London: Longmans, 1959), pp. 1-51.

Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had no manuscript music and the copy at the British Library had roman notation; another four are in Poland within the boundaries of gothic notation Only one of the ten known copies of this missal is in Italy; eight are in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands and would presumably have manuscript gothic notation, as does the copy I have seen in Vienna Of the five known copies of the 1487 Missale Romanum, one is from Buxheim and one from Budapest (not all copies have manuscript notation) As an ambitious publisher, Frankfurt may have wished to avoid making the choice between gothic and roman notation in order more easily to sell his books in both the north and the south This reason would have become less valid in the 1490s, when almost all missals were printed with notation and buyers were not likely to wish to pay for scribal additions Frankfurt's final two octavo missals were published with roman notation, printed by Hamman (1493 Missale Romanum) and Emerich (500o Missale Praedicatorum) The crudest technique for printing staves used rules of a soft metal alloy It is not certain when brass was first used by printers for rules In large cities metal forges would have sold sheets of an alloy like brass that could have been cut into rules Thus Biringucci speaks of visiting a brass works near Milan in the early sixteenth century, and presumably brass would have been readily available at such sites as Brescia, the so-called iron capital, which had thousands of people working iron at the end of the fifteenth century.7 Properly beaten or

rolled brass rules are still today more expensive than type-metal rules but are "in every way superior."8 That there were problems in making brass rules is evident from the cautions issued by Moxon in the seventeenth century against using unbeaten or poorly hammered metal provided by "unskilled joiners": take care that the Brass, before it be cut out, be well and skilefully Planish't, nor would that charge be ill bestowd; for it would be saved out of the thickness of the Brass that is commonly used: For the Joyners being unskilful in Planishing, buy Neal'd thick Brass that the Rule may be strong enough, and so cut into slips without Hammering, which makes the Rule easily bow any way and stand so, and will never come to so good and smooth an Edge as Planish't Brass will Besides, Brass well Planish't will be stiffer and stronger at half the thickness than unplanish't Brass will at the whole.9 Poorly prepared brass rules must have been responsible for the irregularity of printed staves in books such as the inexpensive octavo missals printed in Venice (Figs 20 and 21) In the earliest Italian example of music books with printed staves but no notes, the single staff so generously provided by the printer in Ramis de Pareja's Musica Utriusque Cantus Practica (see Fig i8) was clearly inadequate for the music notation required by the text In one case the three-line staff, printed from inferior rules, was scratched off the

paper by a scribe and replaced by a staff of five lines to contain the music example called for in the text (see Fig 19) In fact, two such staves should have been printed to illustrate properly the two lines of text printed for the music example, and Franchino Gaffurio, another owner of this same copy, added them in the margin with the letters naming the notes printed in yet another two lines of text.'° Books published by Scoto and Frankfurt used equidistant metal rules in two columns for a page of music with text (Fig 20) The space (4-4.5 mm) was determined by the size of the text type, as is apparent from the occasional rubrics that are printed with the staves and at first glance seem to overlap them The technique allowed the printer to use a single size of spacing material between both rules and text, but the material must have been inadequate, because the staff lines wave and bend at the ends of the lines The same method of equidistant

7 Biringucci, Pirotechnia, p xix; Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, pp 180-81 8 Ralph W Polk and Edwin W Polk, The Practice of Printing (Peoria: Bennett, 1964), p 148 9 Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, ed Herbert Davis and Harry Carter, 2d ed (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p 27 Io Albano Sorbelli, "Le due edizioni della Musica Practice di Bartolome Ramis de Pareja," Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1930): 106 Musica Utriusque Cantus Practica was intended as an inexpensive textbook for Ramis de Pareja's music course at the University of Bologna.

4 iIG 18 Bartolome Ramis de Pareja

4 iIG 19 Bartolome Ramis de Pareja, Musica Utriusque Cantus Practica Bologna: Baltasar di Hyrberia, 5 VI 1482, f b6v (Biblioteca del Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna, A 81) * FIG 19 Bartolome Ramis de Pareja, Musica Utriusque Cantus Practica Bologna: [Baltasar di Hyrberia and Heinrich von Koln], 12 V 1482, f b6V (Biblioteca del Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna, A 80.)

FIG 20 Missale Ordinis Praedicatorum Venice: Nikolaus von Frankfurt, 1484, f 06" (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Res B 1515.) FIG 21 Missale Romanum Pavia: Francesco Girardengo and Giovanni Antonio Beretta, 6 VI 1491, f n5v(Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan, BG Inc 53.) rules was employed by Girardengo and Beretta to print an octavo Missale Romanum on 6 June 149i in Pavia (Fig 21) The rules were cut to exact length and suffer from a moderate amount of bending Girardengo himself had printed a beautiful folio missal (D 65) in 1484 with notes and cast metal staves and later printed a quarto missal (1495, D 30) with the same material His printing of the 1491 and 1492 missals with weak rules and without notes can almost certainly be attributed to a lack of type for the octavo format.

Though he was later to be an important music printer in Augsburg, the only music book Erhard Ratdolt printed in Italy is a missal with printed staves and without notes Neither Ratdolt nor any other printer in Italy in I486 had type for the gothic plainchant that was standard in the See of Esztergom (Strigonium) northwest of Budapest in Hungary The folio Missale Strigoniense (Fig 22) disdains the utilitarian practice of less expensive octavo missals of allowing just enough space between staves for the body of the text type; instead, it uses leads in the area above and below the staff to prevent the text from intruding on the staves Each column of staves is designed to fit the ambitus of the music, varying from columns of eight three-line

staves to seven five-line staves The two copies in Budapest's Szechenyi National Library have manuscript notation in the Messine-German style (see Table i) A final example of the use of rules for staves is the 1487 Missale Parisiense printed by Hamman and Emerich, who later became the most prolific printers of music incunabula in Italy The missal for Paris, their first attempt to print music at a time when neither owned music type, is their only book to use rules They clearly had some difficulty with the technique, for many of their staves are missing a line that was not type-high (Fig 23) The ideal printed staff, pleasing to the eye, easy to read, and exact in its spacing and horizontal direction, would be a staff cast in strong metal in one piece measuring the width of the column, without joints to interrupt the movement of the eye and without wavy up-and-down irregularity to disturb the symmetry of the several lines of the staff Entire lines a column wide would have been too large for a handheld mold and would have had to be cast in a rule mold, an item known to have been standard in printers' shops from the seventeenth century and certainly developed much earlier In the first dated printed music of 1476 (see Fig 3I) Ulrich Han used cast metal lines a column wide, four or five of which made up a staff The strong, wide lines have

two distinct edges, clearly visible under a magnifying glass The absence of breaks in the straight lines of the thirty-three pages of staves and the use of five-line as well as four-line staves speak against the possibility of the medium being wood An impressive use of cast metal lines was made in the folio missal printed by Hamman in which the staves reach across the full page (see Fig 24) The unbroken lines provide a good base for the plainchant type; note the provision of shorter pieces for lines that begin with rubrics or large initials The printer was forced to use some short pieces to finish staff 2, however, in which the joints are unpleasantly wide Staves printed from wood appear rarely to have been used, though they necessarily appear in conjunction with notes cut on the same wood (see next

A FIG 23 Missale Parisiense Venice: Johann Hamman and Johann Emerich of Speier, Io XI 1487, f m3" (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Res B 4663.) FIG 24 Missale Strigoniense 0 Venice: Johann Hamman, i II 1493/1494, f ri (Orszagos Szechenyi Konyvtar, Budapest, Inc 180.)

FIG 25 Missale Romanum [Venice: Bernardino Benali? for Luca Antonio Giunta, ca 1490], f o3v (British Library, London, IA 25 Ioo.)

section, "Music Printed from Woodcuts") The appearance of the printed staves in an undated quarto missal (D 84) suggests that wood may have been the printing medium (Fig 25 and Fig 41) Individual lines vary considerably in width; actual breaks occur that could be explained as the wood having been chipped and broken; and sharp changes in width of lines suggest the beginning of the motion of a cutting tool I have attributed the book to the printer Bernardino Benali because it uses his plainchant type R5 The metal rules used in Benali's missal of 1484 (D 63) had provided a poor foundation for printing the notes squarely on lines and spaces In D 84 the same music type is printed on a regular staff that is reduced in size from 13.25-14 mm to o0.5-11.25 mm; the new staff technique provides lines on which notes can be printed in the correct position Because the music type best fits the staff of the quarto format, one would suppose it to have been designed for the smaller book Perhaps a reexamination would reveal that the quarto now assigned the date of ca I490 was the first to use Benali's music type R5, before January 1484, the date of D 63.

The last technique for printing staves developed in the fifteenth century was nesting, the use of a number of short, single-line metal segments to make up a staff line the width of a column The technique was used in Italy by Johann Emerich for a Missale Strigoniense published for Johann Paep of Buda Segments, usually four pieces of II.7512 mm plus one of 8.5 mm, make up each of the four lines of the staff in what appears to be random succession (Fig 26) The handheld, adjustable FIG 26 Missale Strigoniense Venice: [Johann Emerich of Speier for] Johann Paep, 500oo or 1502, f nii (Orszagos Szechenyi Konyvtar, Budapest, Inc 996.)

mold that was used for casting music and text type was the likely instrument for casting the small segments, which are no taller or wider than a stemmed ligature of the same music type This technique became the common method of printing music staves in the sixteenth century and later Since cast segments set as abutting types often leave irregular gaps, they provide less regularity for eye movement, but they do achieve an exact background for printed notes Books printed with staves and without notes could have been composed in a single form, although for Italian liturgical books they would have been printed in two impressions: first in red for staves, rubrics, and initials, and then in black for the text Music theory books such as the Ramis theory text (Fig i8) use a single, black impression for the staves and text The use of two separate forms for printing the text and the staves is suggested in the first Italian printing of staves in two colors and without notes In 1484 Frankfurt published an octavo Dominican missal with red four-line staves printed from metal rules (Fig 20) These rules, often bent and frequently failing to print at all, create a crude and amateurish contrast to the tightly locked and justified text type, and the fact that the black text between the staves is both too high and too low suggests that rules were not present in the black form to aid the compositor in spacing Furthermore, on f 02 nine consecutive red lines are

printed right through black text, an error impossible using one form Music staves in other Frankfurt missals also appear to have been set in two forms, and the Missale Romanum of 1484 has one staff of five lines that overlaps the text (f q7v) Does the use of an additional form for staves suggest the involvement of a separate craftsman to print them? The form used to print the red and black impressions of text type would have had to have the blank spaces for staves filled with spacing material or wooden furniture If the printer had had material on hand to print staves, it would have saved time and energy (and thus money) to print the red staves together with textual rubrics in the first red impression The postponement of printing the staves to a third impression from a newly locked-up form suggests that a separate craftsman with separate materials might have been required for music staves The involvement of a separate craftsman for music printing is also suggested by the existence of two editions with variant copies, some with printed staves and some with an added impression of printed notes One of those cases is the 1484 Missale Romanum of Paganini and Arrivabene Copies exist with the red staves added from a separate form, as described above, and others with both red staves and black notes printed from two additional separate forms It seems unlikely that the printer of the original form

would have chosen to fill the space with furniture and prepare two additional forms if he had owned either staff material or a chant type font Another printer, already a music specialist, may have been hired for the task The following review of the staff techniques of the two most prolific printers of Italian music incunabula (see Tables 13-I4) makes it clear that individual printers tried many techniques Hamman and Emerich used all the techniques described: blank space for music, printed staves from rules, cast lines a column wide, and cast segments The metal rules, probably of poorly beaten brass, used by Hamman for the irregular staves of the I487 Missale Parisiense (Fig 23) did not provide the accuracy necessary for a second impression of notes To print his first notes in the 1488 Missale Romanum, Hamman used cast metal to produce straight lines of exact size That same material, lines of about 75-76 mm for the width of a column, was used in three other books (nos 3, 4, and 12), another 38.5 mm size was used for four books, and two other sizes appear Initials sometimes required shortened lines but rubrics were often pushed into the margin (Fig 27) Both Hamman and Emerich changed their technique for printing staves in I497, discarding metal the width of the column for small segments a number of which made up a column Cast segments allowed easy revision of the length of

one or all of the staff lines, a practice put to frequent use in Emerich's I499/5oo00 Graduale Emerich, the most prolific fifteenth-century Italian music printer, joined Hamman in 1487 for their first book to use metal rules, printed a second in 1492 with space for music, and produced a third in I493 with music printed from woodblocks (Fig 30) After a hiatus of more than a year, Emerich published his first book to use cast music type and metal staves (Fig 28), a technique he continued to use throughout his career His association with

Table 3 Staff techniques of Johann Hamman Date Title Music Staff Size Font Technique D io XI 1487 Missale Parisiense staves io-io.5 40.5-42 (rules) 35 5 x 1488 Missale Romanum notes 18-i9 R9 75 mm 77 14 III 1490 Missale Burgense staves 75-76 mm 31 13 VII 1491 Missale Romanum notes 18-I9 R9 75-83 mm 87 i VI 1492 Missale Valentinum notes 16-16.5 R9 83 mm 128 [from photograph] I VII 1493 Missale Romanum notes io Rio 39 mm 94 XII 1493 Missale Romanum notes io-Io.5 Rio 38.5 mm 95 II 1493/94 Missale Strigoniense notes 5-line R9 138 mm 122 18.5-19 I IX 1494 Missale Sarisburiense notes 17.5 Rg 23 + 15 mm X 3a 118 I XII 1494 Missale Sarisburiense notes o0-10.25 Rio 38.5 mm 119 i II 1494/95 Missale Praedicatorum notes 9.5-10.5 Rio 38.5 mm 136 23 I 1495/96 Agenda Aquileiensis staves 14-15 75 + 25 mm i 5 VI 1497 Missale Romanum notes 16-i6.5 Rii '135-I4 mm X 3a 104 13 IX 1498 Agenda Pataviensis notes 15 Gi 13.5 mm X 8a 2 "Cast segments.

Table I4 Staff techniques of Johann Emerich of Speier Date Title Music Staff Size Font Technique D [n.d.] Missale Romanum ? 37 io XI 1487 Missale Parisiense staves Io-1o.5 rules, 40.5-42 mm 35 25 XII 1492 Breviarium Praedicatorum space 7 28 IV 1493 Missale Romanum notes Io woodcut 93 13 VIII 1494 Missale Romanum notes 14.5 Ri8 54.5 mm 98 9 X 1494 Processionarium Praedicatorum notes 13.75-15 Ri8 85 mm 147 30 IV 1495 Liber Catechumeni notes 14-14.25 Ri8 85 + 16 mm 18 31 X 1495 Missale Strigoniense staves 15.5 58-58.5 mm 123 i4 VII 1496 Missale Romanum notes I5.5 Ri9 77-5-82 mm ioi 1o 0I 1497 Missale Romanum notes 14.5 Ri8 8 mm X 7, segments 1o6 28 VI 1498 Missale Romanum notes i5.5 RI9 8 mm X io 109 15 x 1498 Missale Romanum notes 10.25 R20 9.75 mm X 4 III 26 II 1498/1499 Missale Strigoniense staves 15.5 7.8 mm X 9 124 24 IV I499 Missale Quinque Ecclesiae staves [film] ? X 5, segments 36 28 VI I499 Missale Messanense notes [film] Ri9 34 1499/1500 Graduale Romanum notes 32 R2I 8, 12.5, 17,24 mm 17 6 III 1500 Missale Praedicatorum notes io R20 9.5 mm X 4 139 31 III 1500 Missale Strigoniense staves 16 11.75 mm X 4 + 8.5mm 125 6 VI 1500 Liber Catechumeni notes 13.75-14 Ri8 7.6 mm X 14 20 24 VII 1500 Missale Segoviense notes 15.5 Ri9 7.8 mm X I 120 5 I i5co0/I0I Missale Carmelitarum notes 15.5 RI9 8 mm X 7-130 27 II ISOO/I5o0 Missale Romanum notes 14.5 Ri8 8 mm X 7-17

FIG 27 Missale Valentinum Venice: Johann Hamman, I VI 1492, f 06 (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Inc 773-) publisher Luca Antonio Giunta began with a Missale Romanum of 1494 that contained fifty-four pages of music with staves printed from cast lines and notes from type It may have been Giunta's capital that enabled Emerich to abandon the woodcut technique permanently Emerich's technique for printing staves soon changed to use of short metal segments The quarto and octavo books printed by Emerich used 8 mm segments; large folios used 12 mm segments; octavos used 9.5-10 mm segments When a note of the music strayed above or below the normal staff, it was common practice in manuscript and printed music to change the clef to avoid the need for a line above or below the staff, but in his Graduale of 499/1500o Emerich often used one of his segments to print a ledger line for notes beyond the staff (see Fig io); he was the only Italian printer to trouble to

FIG 28 Missale Romanum Venice: Johann Emerich of Speier, 3 VIII 1494, f k4 (mis-signed 14) (Biblioteca Comunale, Ferrara, S12.1.14.)

do so Emerich's staff lines consistently fit together so well that the eye often detects no break in the printed line The space is almost invariably without fluctuation, making possible an accurate second impression of the notes The stage of printing music books with staves and without notes proved to be of short duration Primarily a transitional practice of printers who lacked the appropriate type, it lost its validity quickly as various notational styles became available in movable metal type It is generally the later specialists in music type who tried printing staves without notes (Frankfurt and Scoto are publishers rather than printers) Books printed with staves provide an interesting glimpse of several printers' first essays into the field of music printing and illustrate a variety of technical solutions that would be integral to their later work in double-impression printing of music with type.

Music Printed from Woodcuts

Some of the earliest and best-known examples of music printed from woodcuts are found in twelve Italian music incunabula (Table 15).l The first woodcut music was printed in the Breviarium Lubicensis (GW5374) by Lucas Brandis in Lubeck in 1478.1 The second woodcut music was printed in the second edition of Niger's Grammatica ([Basel? ca I4851, Hii857); the first edition of 1480, printed in Venice, had used the first known mensural type (MI) The third woodcut music is the first Italian effort, a theory book with examples of mensural music printed in Bologna in I487 German printing historians classify such woodcut incunabula as "block printing" and do not distinguish between wood and metal techniques (the German term Blockdruck comprises both Holzschnitt and Metallschnitt).'3 However, all known incunabula music illustrations from blocks cut by hand are printed from wood The first application of metal engraving to music is thought to be the Intabolatura da leuto del divino Francesco da Milano, published sometime before I536.14 Not until the reappearance of engraved music in the i58os, first in Vincenzo Galilei's Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence: Marescotti, 158 i), did the technique become frequently used by printers.

Woodcut music illustrations made possible the early printing of theoretical works on music without the expensive production of mensural music types or fonts of complex plainchant neumes They constitute, therefore, an important part of fifteenth-century music printing Multiple editions of several titles prove the heavy demand for such publications; the large number of extant copies of such books as the folio Practica Musicae of 1496 suggests that publishers printed many copies in anticipation of high sales Not only students but also professors purchased the books: an extant copy of Ramis de Pareja's Musica Utriusque Cantus Practica contains marginal notes by Gaffurio (Bologna, Museo Bibliografico Musicale, A.80, see Figure 19), and a copy of Bonaventura da Brescia's Regula Musicae was owned by Pietro Aron (I507 edition; British Library, K.i.gIo [i]) Most Italian incunabula with woodcut examples-ten of the twelve-are theoretical works that require illustrations of mensural music, com i I For a review of the literature on incunabula with music printed from woodcuts, see Hermann Springer, "Die musikalischen Blockdrucke des 15 und i6 Jahrhunderts," Bericht uber den 2 Kongress der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft zu Basel 1906 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1907), pp 37-46; Wilhelm Martin Luther, "Die nichtliturgischen Musikinkunabeln der Gottinger Bibliothek," Libris et Litteris: Festschrift fir Hermann Tiemann zum sechzigsten Geburtstag am 9 Juli i959, ed Christian Voigt and Erich Zimmerman (Ham-

burg: Maximilian-Gesellschaft, 1959), pp I31-37; Maria Przywecka-Samecka, "Problematik des Musiknotendruckes in der Inkunabelzeit," Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1978, pp 54-55; Wilhelm Martin Luther, "Der Blockdruck," in "Notendruck," Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 9: cols I676-680 I2 Przywecka-Samecka, "Problematik des Musiknotendruckes," pp 54-5513 Springer, "Die musikalischen Blockdrucke." I4 An illustration is included in H Edmund Poole's "Printing," p 248.

Table 15 Italian music incunabula printed from woodcuts Date Author, Title Place: Printer References D 30 IV 1487 Burzio, Musices Opusculum Bologna: Ugo Ruggerio for GW 5796 8 Benedetto Faelli RISM 162 IGI 1954 15 XII 1492 Gaffurio, Theorica Musicae Milan: Filippo Mantegazza for GS 10437 I5 Giovanni Pietro da Lomazzo IGI 4115 7 III 1493 Verardus, Historia Baetica Rome: Eucharius Silber IGI 10146 156 H*I594I 28 IV 1493 Missale Romanum Venice: Johann Emerich of W924 93 Speier IGI 6630 1494 Missale Ambrosianum Milan: [Giovanni Antonio W 32 28 d'Onate] for Valentino de IGI 6546 Meregari 30 IX I496 Gaffurio, Practica Musicae Milan: Guillaume Le Signerre GW I0434 12 for Giov P da Lomazzo IGI 4112 H 7407 27 VII I497 Bonaventura da Brescia, Brescia: Angelo Britannico IGI 1952 3 Breviloquium Musicale RISM 1:162 [Regula Musicae Planae} 23 IX 1497 Gaffurio, Practica Musicae Brescia: Angelo Britannico GW 10435 13 IGI 413 H 7408 27 IX I497 Bonaventura de Brescia, Regula [Brescia]: Angelo Britannico GW 4833 4 Musicae Planae IGI 1953 21 IX 1499 Compendium Musices Venice: for Giovanni Battista GW 7263 10 Sessa RISM 2:925 3 IX 1400 Bonaventura da Brescia, Regula Brescia: Angelo Britannico GW 4834 5 [15300] Musicae Planae RISM : 162 IGI 1954 o1 IX I500 Bonaventura de Brescia, Regula Milan: Leonard Pachel for GW 4385 6 Musicae Planae Giovanni de Legnano IGI 1955 plex diagrams such as the Guidonian hand, or representations of the hexachord system that are

difficult to create in type A book printed in Rome in 1493 with woodcut music (see Table I5), however, includes the first secular polyphonic music printed in Italy By using woodcuts to print short examples of mensural music, printers avoided the challenge and cost of cutting mensural music types, thereby postponing their development The first mensural music type, a font in the standard white notation (Mi), had been used in 1480 for Niger's Grammatica in Venice, but white mensural type was not to appear again until the next century, in Petrucci's publications All the examples of incunabula with woodcut mensural music appeared outside Venice, in cities where mensural type was presumably not available.

Incunabula with music printed in Italy from woodcuts were not as concentrated in major centers of printing as were music books printed from type, presumably because the woodcuts were more easily produced by local craftsmen than were music types Bologna's single music book using woodcuts was a textbook printed for use at the local university; Brescia's four editions honored local authors; Rome's edition of Verardus was aimed at the fol-

lowers of the king of Naples Milan's editions include a missal for local use, two theoretical works by the head of the ducal chapel, and a reissue of Bonaventura's popular treatise on plainchant Venice's editions include two of a treatise that closely resembles that written in Venice by Franciscus de Brugis (first printed in 1499 in the Graduale Romanum), as well as the introduction to the reader of the missal printed by Emerich in I493 The twelve Italian music incunabula (Table 15) were printed from only eight sets of woodcuts and represent only eight different titles The four editions of Bonaventura da Brescia's Regula Musicae Planae use the same woodcuts for twenty-three pages of illustrations of roman plainchant In addition, the short, eight-leaf Venetian treatise on plainchant was reissued by the publisher with new woodcuts about I5o5. The two editions of the Practica Musicae of Gaffurio use the same woodcuts.'5 Music appears on very few pages in most of the books with music printed from woodcuts The diagrams in the Theorica Musicae of Gaffurio include actual notes on only one leaf, kiv, in a crude representation of the hexachords.'6 The Missale Ambrosianum includes on its final leaf one three-line staff of Ambrosian plainchant (Fig 29) The woodcuts of the Burzio treatise include illustrations of plainchant, mensural music, and diagrams on five

pages.7 Of the two Italian fifteenth-century editions of the Historia Baetica of Verardus, only that of 1493 can be located today; on the final two pages (ff e7V-e8) are printed four voice parts of an Italian song in praise of Ferdinand and Isabella, the first known publication of a polyphonic Italian song The Venetian plainchant treatise contains diagrams or plainchant music on eleven of its sixteen pages In later editions the music illustrations were set in type Three of the sets of music woodcuts were more ambitious Emerich's first printed missal, of I493, contained music on forty-six pages The style of Emerich's woodcut plainchant is close to that of his music type: a short-stemmed virga with unpointed notehead, lozenges set close together for the climacus, a stemmed diagonal, and an angular F clef The overall appearance of the music, however, is comparatively crude, because of the placement of the stem on the wrong side of the virga and a frequent inconsistency in the balance of the size of noteheads (Fig 30) The treatise on music theory by the Franciscan monk Bonaventura da Brescia contains music woodcuts on twenty-eight pages.'8 The Guidonian hand includes three accidentals: flat, natural, and sharp The chant examples are cut in roman plainchant notation with a long-stemmed virga and a liquescent neume as well as many compound neumes Again the effect is crude, because the

notes are often compressed into too little space to align with the text printed from type, the noteheads are far from square, and the neumes are irregular in size The music written in Bonaventura's own 15 The third staff off gg3 of the 1497 editions has been recut (British Library, K.1.g4) 16 Facsimile editions, Bologna: Formi, 1969; Rome: Reale Accademia d'Italia, 1934 Meyer-Baer describes the music woodcuts of the 1492 Theorica as: "cut in wood, in a wonderfully clear and precise manner The typographical beauty of these examples consists in the harmony of the proportions and in the exactitude of the execution" ("The Printing of Music," p 174), but she is clearly referring to the Practica Musicae of 1496 as her illustration confirms The printed music in the Theorica consists of crudely cut isolated notes in diagrams 17 Facsimile edition, Bologna: Formi, 1969 18 Facsimile edition, Milan: Bollettino Bibliografico Musicale, 1934 S Martinotti, "Bonaventura da Brescia (de Brixia)," in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol 2 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1969), pp 631-32 FIG 29 Missale Ambrosianum [Milan: Giovanni Antonio d'Onate, 1494], f ¥IO (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan, AM-IX-4I.)

FIG 30 Missale Romanum Venice: Johann Emerich of Speier, 28 IV I493, f 13 I (I7,4v) (Biblioteca Angelica., Rome, Inc 68.) manuscript hand in his 1489 text of the treatise displays a lightness and grace that were not translated into the woodcut.19 The masterpiece of early Italian woodcut music is the Practica Musicae of Gaffurio Numerous examples of roman plainchant on a four-line staff and of mensural music on a five-line staff are printed throughout the book The mensural music is in a graceful, well-spaced style that flows as naturally as a manuscript hand, with oval noteheads and flags curving down from the tops of note stems The roman plainchant is well spaced but less pleasing to the eye because of the lack of regularity in the supposedly square noteheads The woodcut music of Practica Musicae is a notable exception to the usual

poor level of craftsmanship of early woodcut music, which falls far below the quality of contemporary woodcut pictorial illustrations and initials The technique of printing music from woodcuts was used in the absence of music type or in 19 The manuscript is at the Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna For a reproduction, see M T Rosa Barezzani, "I Britannico stampatori di musica a Brescia," Commentari dell'Ateneo di Brescia 175 (1970): 159.

competition with printers who had monopolies on music printing from type Woodcuts continued to be used, though infrequently, for printing music into the sixteenth century, reaching a high point in the Roman and Venetian music publications of Andrea Antico, which rivaled their typeset competitors Despite such exceptions, the use of woodcuts to print music has been a peripheral technique throughout the history of music books, employed only rarely and then primarily for short musical examples.

Music Printed from Type

The transformation of the music manuscript into the printed music book was completed in the i47os when, in the first book printed with music, metal type was used to print music notation on the lines and spaces of a previously printed staff The less complete techniques of printing notes or staves discussed earlier in this chapter were later developments Of the I56 Italian incunabula, 76 contain music notation printed from metal type cast in 38 designs Analysis of statistics on printers, their music imprints, and their music types clarifies the importance in the history of music printing of certain individuals-Emerich and Hamman-and of certain cities-Rome in the I470s, Milan in the I48os, and Venice in the i48os and especially the i490s During these decades there was a gradual addition of formats smaller than the early folios and a commensurate development of new small music types Type designers chose differing solutions to the challenge of reproducing in metal the varying stem lengths of manuscript notation and the complexity of compound neumes and liquescence, and some of the resulting types were more successful than others (see Part II for discussions of individual types and printers) By the end of the century, and perhaps much earlier, it is likely that printers delegated responsibility for music type to type professionals,

one of whom is named in archival documents as Jacomo Ungaro The printing of music with metal type became a specialized trade focused in a few cities and practiced by only a handful of craftsmen The alphabetic types of fifteenth-century printers were studied and classified at the turn of the century by Robert Proctor (An Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum, 1898 906) and Konrad Haebler (Typenrepertorium der Wiegendrucke, I905), illustrated in the Veroffentlichungen der Gesellschaft fur Typenkunde des XV Jahrhunderts (I907-1939), and further classified by the editors of the Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum (i908 to the present) The omission of music type from those studies distorts the contribution of printers who specialized in music It is a serious misrepresentation of the printing career of Johann Emerich of Speier, for example, to describe him as a printer who used eighteen gothic text types and not to mention his four roman plainchant fonts, one extended to include mensural type Emerich has been praised for his fine text types in an unusually wide range of sizes and for his illustrated books, but his music printing has been an undervalued field of accomplishment His ambitious production of a gradual and an antiphonal in

roman plainchant printed from a complex font of type that was designed to handle the intricacies of melismatic and liquescent plainchant notation is a fitting capstone to the often uneven body of work that formed the transition from manuscript to printed book for the music service books of the Catholic church With the development by Haebler and Proctor of a system of alphabetic type classification by printer and size and design of type, printing historians acquired a basic tool for the attribution of incunabula without imprint information While the text types of music incunabula remain the basic tool for attribution, the relatively small number of music types makes them a useful additional aid The identification of the printer of a book's text type may not necessarily identify the printer of the entire book The music in the book may have been printed separately, by a second printer-a theory supported by the existence of some music incunabula in two variants, one with printed notes and staves and

Table 16 Classification of music types in Italian incunabula* Size Total Roman Ambrosian Gothic Mensural Small 5 5 Medium 14 10 2 I I Large I7 16 I Very Large 2 2 * With some exceptions, large missal types are defined as those printed on a staff of from 15 to 20 mm; medium missals, on a staff of I I to i5 mm; and small fonts on a staff of 9 to I mm the other with blank space for music The specimens and classification of music types used in Italy in the fifteenth century provide a tool for attribution of early music books Most of the music types can be assigned to printers and chronological periods A few that were used in books without colophons or with colophons that mention only a publisher can be attributed only to a city and time period or can be attributed to a particular printer with reservations From its types the 1487 Missale Romanum (D 73) published by Paganini can be attributed to Bevilaqua, who did the almost identical reprint for Paganini in 1499 (D I 13) with the same music and alphabetic types (see Fig 42) And the appearance of Benali's music type in the anonymously printed Missale Romanum (D 84) of the British Library is firmer evidence for attribution than a woodcut, an item that may be suspected to have circulated more frequently among printers than did music type A review of Italian music types discloses that nearly all are designs of roman plainchant and nearly half are in the "large" type size used for the

folio format of the missal used on the altar (see Table i6) By far the largest category of Italian music incunabula is that of the 121 missals No missal smaller than f-olio size was issued in Milan, and only two missals smaller than folio size in Rome, the quartos of 1488 and 1494, which used the large music type designed for folio format It was Venetian craftsmen, and particularly the printers Hamman and Emerich, who took advantage of the sizable new audience for small missals by introducing five small roman plainchant fonts Venice produced all the Italian small plainchant types (see Table 17), an innovation that dramatically extended the marketing of service books by lowering their cost and improving their portability Benali was the innovator who added plainchant type to the octavo missals that had been appearing in Venice since 1481 with either no space or blank space for music, or with stoves printed from rules Other small types quickly followed Benali's type used a virga with a very small notehead and an even smaller lozenge that were very difficult to print on the appropriate lines and spaces of a staff that was printed from irregular and wavy rules Novimagio used a type that was more balanced in design

though limited in number of characters, but his printed staves were grossly irregular The next three types, very similar in size, design, and number of characters, were used consecutively by Hamman, Bevilaqua, and Emerich of Speier Hamman Table 17 Small type fonts in Venice Date Printer No of Editions Type Measurement 1483 Benali R5: 10.25:I.252 X 4 1491 Novimagio I R5: 9-II:22 X 5 1493 Hamman 4 Rio: IO-IO.5:I.752(2) X 3.5 1497 Bevilaqua 2 R8: IO-Io.5:1.52 X 3.5 1498 Emerich 2 R20: IO-IO.25:I.52 X 3.5 Type measurement is in mm, staff:virga (notehead by stem).

Table I8 The relationship of book production to stem length of Roman Large Missal types Short Stems Long Stems No of Editions Printer Length No of Editions Printer Length 7 Han (Planck) 7.5 i Valdarfer 15 3 Girardengo 7.5 I Torresani 12 5 Hamman 7 I Ragazzoni 12 I Preller 6.5 i Arrivabene I 1.75 i Pinzi 6.5 I Bonini 11.75 i Emerich 6 I Scoto 1 I Torresani 5.5 i Britannico o1 2 Bevilaqua 12 printed octavos from I493 to 1495 and Bevilaqua printed two octavos in 1497 (and D 141* in 15oo?) Emerich began using a small type in 1498 The fact that in I493 Emerich published an octavo missal with forty-six pages of woodcut music (D 93) suggests that he lacked capital to purchase music type at that time; his first music printed from type appeared in a quarto missal of August 1494 (D 98) While the designs of plainchant type are very similar, the length of the note stem is a variable that dramatically changes the appearance of printed chant The stem lengths of Roman Large Missal types are compared in Table i8 The lightness and

fluidity of the long-stemmed pointed types of Torresani and Bevilaqua make a refreshing contrast to the heavy regularity of the short-stemmed unpointed notes of the three main music printers The most prolific Italian music printers, Han (Planck), Hamman, and Emerich, used types with a short stem; the notes seem to hang in midair rather than rest securely on the staff Designs with short stems need fewer variants to enable them to be printed on any line or space of the staff and therefore take less time to cut, cast, and set Such designs, then, were more practical, but they were farther from the manuscript plainchant models, which frequently had stems that reached from the notehead to the bottom of the staff One early roman plainchant font, that of Christoph Valdarfer, first used in 1482, avoided the problem of casting variable stem lengths by using rules placed below cast stemless noteheads (see Figs 56 and 57) The result is far from satisfying: the stems look weak and wavy and often are unconnected to the noteheads In settling on short-stemmed notes, aesthetic demands may have been sacrificed to the technical requirements of the compositor in the age of printing, imposing a standard on plainchant types that persists today It is interesting to note that mensural fonts followed a different path of development; varying stem lengths have been cast in metal from the first fonts of i480 to today.

The size of the notehead in relation to the space between staff lines and the size of the text type is another important determinant of the stylistic appearance of a font A notehead that takes up three-fourths of the space between staff lines looks heavy (RI2), whereas a note that fills only one-half the space (RI7) is much easier to read A notehead that is smaller than one-half a staff space (R23, RI i) is more difficult to read, perhaps partly because of the difficulty in printing the note squarely within a space or on a line If the notehead is as large as the x-height of the text type (as in D I43, which is printed with R30), the music overbalances the letters Most of the music types presented in this study can be associated with a single printer The only music font to appear in Rome in the fifteenth century was that introduced by Han and kept in use by Planck, who was evidently his heir However, the Medium Missal type introduced by Benali is apparently identical to that used in the only music book by the printer Piero di Piasi (D 69) and that used in

in unsigned missal (D 84) There are strong similarities between Scoto's types, Roman Large R3 and Medium R4, and those of Torti, Medium Ri2, and Ragazzoni, Large RI4 If Scoto was a publisher rather than a printer, the music in his 1482 missals may have been printed by Torti and Ragazzoni, who later used the types in signed books Because Ri2 and RI4 have certain idiosyncrasies that challenge that hypothesis, however, Scoto is assumed to have been the printer until further evidence is forthcoming Giovanni Battista Sessa is another individual mentioned in the imprints of music incunabula who was very likely a publisher rather than a printer Proctor suggested that Sessa relied on outside labor for the printing of his books, and that has proven to be true for the sixteenth-century output (see Chapter VII) Sessa's R24 is very similar to Emerich's R20, and one of the books printed with R24 uses the staff technique employed by Emerich It would not be surprising if Sessa's music type were found to have been crafted by a local type designer and used by hired printers.

Fifteenth-century music types had remarkably short lives While Hamman and Emerich had as many as four music type fonts in different sizes and Pachel had three, most printers had only one size of roman plainchant type Twenty-five of the Italian fonts were used in Italy for only one book At least one printer used his type for a second time outside Italy (Bonini's R3 i, in Lyons) Perhaps one explanation for the short life of types in Venice lies in the monopolies created by privileges either for the types themselves or for the special kinds of books for which they were designed Such privileges were not uncommon The first privilege granted to a printer in Italy went to the founder of the art in Venice, Johann of Speier, in I469, who received a five-year monopoly on all printing in the city; fortunately for the development of the field, he died a few months later In i495 the Venetian Senate granted a privilege for printing Greek to the printer who commissioned the first Greek types there, Aldo Manuzio, and in I498 to the music printer Ottaviano Petrucci for a mensural music type In i 50 Bevilaqua asked for a ten-year privilege to print small missals ("li messaleti picoli"), which apparently was not granted; he soon left Venice to take up the life of an itinerant printer The use of privileges to protect type designers encouraged the development of new designs but discouraged competition, since only one type could be granted official approval.

An attempt to follow the documentation from the Venetian archives for privileges for the first publication of the gradual and antiphonal in roman plainchant reveals a confusing sequence of requests by several individuals: I January 1497 Bernardino Stagnino requested a privilege of ten years to print the "Antifonario e Graduale di canto." (Fulin 62) 5 March 1497 Tommaso, a Venetian, received a privilege to print the "Antifonario Graduale et il Salmista in coro," not yet printed, and for which it was very difficult to find a publisher, because it was so expensive (Fulin 64) 6 December I497 Giacomo Britannico, citizen of Brescia and printer officiossimo, obtained the privilege to print the gradual and antiphonal (Fulin 73) 21 January 1499 Andrea Corbo received a ten-year privilege for capital letters of such a shape, height, and width that they could only be used to print choirbooks ("quod ipse solus facere possit stampare litteras ejusdem formae et grossitiei ac magnitudinis").20 (Fulin 9o)

A gradual was finally printed in Venice by Emerich for Luca Antonio Giunta in three volumes that appeared on 28 September 1499, February I5oo, and I March I5oo (D 17) The title page of the third volume states that it was printed under a privilege that also applied to the forthcoming antiphonal 20 Andrea Corbo is cited as Andrea da Corona (Andrea de Cronstadt, Andreas Burciensis, Corbo, Corvo, Corvus) in Gedeon Borsa, Clavis Typographorum Librariorumque Italiae 1465-I600 (Baden-Baden: Valentine Loerner, 1980) A typecutter and printer in Venice from 1476 to 1484, he was from Transylvania, then a part of Hungary, and was formerly known as Sigismund Corwin: "Andreas olim Sigismundi Corui inxisor literarum stampe (impressor liborum)" (Fitz, "Ungarische Buchdrucker," p I I5).

(1503-1504; unnumbered item after D 2) and psalter: Cum privilegio concesso ab illustrissimo Venetorum domino pro dicto graduali modo impresso et etiam pro antiphonario et psalmista iam immediate imprimendis: With a privilege granted by the most illustrious Signoria of Venice for the said manner of printing of the gradual and also for the antiphonal and psalter immediately to be printed: Despite the apparent expenditure of time and money by several printers and by the Venetian Senate and College of Counselors, Giunta managed to secure the privilege for plainchant service books that would bring his family money for reprints for more than a century It is not clear what happened to the privileges for printing choirbooks that were granted in 1497 to the Venetian Tommaso and the Brescian Britannico; perhaps they were unable to secure financial backing for so expensive an undertaking as was mentioned in Tommaso's privilege The large capital letters printed in red in the Giunta choirbooks may well be those cut by Corbo The alphabetic and music types cut for the choirbooks may have been acquired from Venetian type designers in a similar fashion, perhaps from Corbo's fellow countryman Jacomo Ungaro In the fifteenth

century many Italian printers had been commissioned to print liturgical books with music for foreign cities and religious communities, but by the mid-sixteenth century that business was to be concentrated in the hands of a very few.2' Of the men associated with liturgical music printing in Venice, only those who were active publishers in the fifteenth century managed to establish the family dynasties that were to dominate the trade in the sixteenth century-Giunta, Scoto, Sessa, Paganini, Torresani (with Manuzio), and Arrivabene Of those, Giunta was to be by far the most important.2 The existence of a large number of similar fifteenth-century Venetian alphabetic types has long puzzled bibliographers Proctor tried to explain their presence by suggesting that there might be "type factories independent of the printers" where types could be purchased.2 Remarkably similar plainchant music types also appear in Venice in the last decades of the fifteenth century As we have seen, Jacomo Ungaro, a typecutter who claimed responsibility for Petrucci's first music type, worked in Venice "for forty years" (from about I473 to 15 4), and other craftsmen in Venice in the 1490s called themselves typecutters and typecasters Some music printers are known by their privileges

or equipment to have made or commissioned their own types between 1474 and I492: Zarotto, Valdarfer, Bevilaqua, Britannico, and Girardengo Printers in cities far from the industrial development of Venice (Rome, Parma, Naples, Brescia, Bologna, Pavia) seem to have been more skillful in typecutting and casting in addition to the techniques used for printing books Similarities between the music types of the major music printers, Hamman and Emerich, may be the result of common techniques evolved during the time the two men worked together on music books as partners before they began printing music on their own It is also possible that Emerich was responsible for some of Hamman's music printing (his whereabouts are unknown between 1487, when he printed a missal with Hamman, and 1492, when he issued his first book) or that a separate type designer and cutter was used by both printers It is a fact that type foundries and type designers played an important role in Venice in the 1490s in the establishment of such a well-known printer as Aldo Manuzio, and it appears that the music printer Petrucci relied on type specialists to provide him with music types It would be surprising if other Venetian music printers of the I49os did not avail themselves of such accessible type craftsmen.

21 The surviving contracts for the first Ambrosian missal (D 23) and for a 1484 Florentine breviary provide insight into the publishing process for early liturgical books See Arnaldo Ganda, "La prima edizione del messale ambrosiano (1475): Motive pastorali e aspetti commerciali," La Bibliofilia 83 (1 981 ): 97 12; William A Pettas, "The Cost of Printing a Florentine Incunable," La Bibliofilia 75 (I973), 67-85 Kingdon's study of the economics of publishing a nonmusical liturgical book, the breviary, gives an account that parallels in many ways that of the liturgical books with music "The Plantin Breviaries," pp I34-50. 22 For a review of the trade in Venice in the sixteenth century, see Paul Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 154o-1605 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, i977), pp 3-3223 Proctor, I: 14.

Were Venetian music types designed by type professionals? The first music type in Venice, introduced in I48o, was the first mensural type (Mi, white mensural notation) The second and third mensural types were also introduced in Venice, in 1500oo (Ri9, roman plainchant and black mensural rotation) and i o i (Petrucci, white mensural notation) Jacomo Ungaro claimed responsibility for Petrucci's font, the semibreve of which is nearly identical in size to the music font Mi used in 1480 in a book whose colophon tells us little about the edition's producers (the title was selected by Santritter and the printing was done by an otherwise unknown printer, Theodor Franck of Wurzburg) f Ungaro knew how to cut white mensural type for Petrucci in about i500 (the privilege for the type vas granted in 1498 and it was first used in 50oI), ie was certainly capable of playing a part in the creation of the equally demanding first black mensural type that appeared in the 1499 gradual in the same city If Ungaro contributed to the design or production of the mensural types of R2I, he would probably have produced the plainchant designs that make up the rest of the font If we know that Ungaro cut the second mensural type in Venice in about i500 and that he was living in Venice from about 1473, it is also reasonable to suggest that he might be responsible for the only other white mensural type cut there during that time, the 1480 type used by Theodor Franck of Wurzburg Furthermore, if a music typecutter was active in Venice as

early as 1480, most of the music type introduced there in the fifteenth century may have come from him rather than from the printers themselves The most important role in the history of Italian music incunabula, dominated by the Venetian contribution, may have been that of the music typecutter, without whom many printers and publishers who creatively set the type and marketed the finished product could not have printed music While there are many gaps in our knowledge of the origins and training of fifteenth-century printers, there is a consensus that after the art of printing reached its first full flowering in Mainz in the early I450s, craftsmen who were trained there moved to new localities to set up shops, trained others, and rapidly transmitted the technique outside Germany If music printing follows the process of linear development known for alphabetic printing, the training of music printers should lead back to early masters As would be expected with a linear development of printing from Mainz, the earliest printers in Italy were German immigrants Many of the first music printers in Italy were also Germans (see Table i9) The cast of characters in the history of early Italian music printers and types is smaller than it appears from the multitude of names in the colophons of music books Many who claimed responsibility for music books were publishers rather than printers: Giunta, Scoto, Paganini, Sessa, and probably Torresani and others as well The men who actually printed music books were not always

specified but certainly number fewer than the names listed with music types in Part II, since that list includes some publishers Of the twenty-two men who are known to have used music types in Italy during the fifteenth century, eight were Germans, one Dutch, one Dalmatian, and the other thirteen Italian natives of regions from Calabria to Lake Como German printers introduced music printing in Rome (Han), Milan (Valdarfer), Venice (Theodor Franck), and Naples (Preller) They issued the first signed books of roman, ambrosian, gothic, and black and white mensural types anywhere, though it is not certain that any of the nine printers cut his own types Undoubtedly, the contributions of German craftsmen dominated early music printing in Italy What of the chronological sequence of development of individual music types? The first music Table 19 German music printers in Italy Number Number Name of Types of Editions Han (Planck) i 7 Valdarfer 2 2 Pachel 3 4 Novimagio I i Theodor Franck I I Hamman 4 12 Preller I I Emerich 4 I4 Total 17 of 38 42 of 76

Table 20 Venetian incunabula music type by size and year Roman Small Missal Roman Medium Missal Roman Large Missal Type Number Date Type Number Date Type Number Date R5 1483 R4 1482 R3 1482 Rio, 14 149 1-492 R6 1484 R9, 14 1488-1489 R20, 24 1498 Ri2, I3 I489 RI6 1494 Ri8 1494 RI9, 22,23 1496 RII, 24 1497 R25 1499 type appeared about 1473 in a gradual and the next, in Germany, was used by Bernhard Richel (active I472-1484) for a Missale Basiliense in 1480 or I48i.2 The first Italian music types appeared in 1476 and 1477, followed by a proliferation of types in the i48os, mainly in Venice (see Table 20) Practically nothing is known about the printing of the ca 1473 gradual Richel had printed the first dated book in Basel in 1474 and his first Missale Basiliense, with blank space for music, about I478 (IGI 6552) Richel must have known of the earlier book, since Basel is located just outside the Diocese of Constance (see Map 3), for which the ca 1473 gradual was printed; indeed, he may well have received some training in the shop that produced it.

Did Ulrich Han, the German printer of the first music in Italy (1476 Missale Romanum), know of the ca I473 gradual? Han's dated imprints in Rome begin in I467, but no books were issued under his name alone between 4 October 1470 and 24 December 1474 Capable German printers were present in Rome who could have printed for him, including Stephan Planck, who in 1478 took over his shop Perhaps Han's role in Rome in the early I470S was that of an absent publisher and he was present at the first music printing A small Parma publisher, Damiano Moilli, issued the first gradual printed in roman plainchant type, in April 1477, six months after Han's missal It was the first printed book issued by Moilli, who spent most of his career preparing manuscript choirbooks for the local Benedictine monastery He published only three books after the impressive gradual, among them another landmark, the only incunabulum on calligraphy An acknowledged craftsman and artist, he seems to have been quite capable of designing and cutting the text and music types used for the gradual At his first appearance in archival documents in 1474, he was already listed as a printer, and Donati suggested that he may have been involved with the first printing in Italy.25 Where did he learn to cut types and print-more specifically, to print music?

The circumstances surrounding the music type introduced by Christoph Valdarfer at Milan in 1482 strongly suggest a link to the north Valdarfer, the first music printer in Milan, is known to have traveled from Milan to Basel to enter the employ of the printer Bernhard Richel during I4801481, when Richel issued the Missale Basiliense with music.26 Upon Valdarfer's return to Milan, he issued the Missale Ambrosianum of x5 March 1482, the first printed music in Milan from the first ambrosian plainchant type A few months later ( I September) he issued the Missale Romanum with music printed from the first roman plainchant type used in Milan At Basel under Richel he must have acquired the ability to cut music types or have found someone who could, as well as to use them to print music on staves in a two-color process His solution for music type, cast noteheads with stems apparently printed from rules, was unique Leonard Pachel, music printer in Milan from 1486, was, like Ulrich Han, from Ingolstadt Pachel first appears as the witness of a contract between Valdarfer and Cola Montano in 1474; Montano was the publisher of the first dated Missale Romanum, printed in Milan by Zarotto in 1474 Pachel

24 Arnold Pfister, "Vom fruhsten Musikdruck in der Schweiz," in Festschrift: Gustav Binz, Oberbibliothekar der Offentlichen Bibliothek der Universitat Basel zum 70 Geburtstag (Basel: Schwabe, I935), pp 160-77 25 Lamberto Donati, "Passio Domini Nostri Iesu Christi: Frammento tipografico della Biblioteca Parsoniana," La Bibliofilia 56 (1954): 8I-21526 BMC VI: xxiii.

issued his first book in Milan in i477 and his first.Missale Romanun (with space for music) in 1479 In [476 he would have been about twenty-five years old, connected with printing, and without a shop; night he have become acquainted with music type it the printing of Han's Missale Romanum in 1476 at Rome? Because the earliest Venetian music types cannot be associated with particular craftsmen, there is no way to connect them with the beginning of music printing The first, a mensural type, was used by Theodor Franck of Wurzburg, who is described in the colophon simply as one who labored on the book ("fert opus") The second type was used in books issued by Scoto, a publisher who seems to have preferred to hire others to print his books From Petrucci's 1498 privilege we find it was common knowledge that protracted attempts had been made outside Italy to develop music type for both mensural and plainchant notations: "many not only in Italy but also outside Italy had long sought to print music in a very convenient manner and, consequently, plainchant much more easily."7 As we have seen, there is a possibility that Ungaro was cutting music type in Venice as early as 1480, when the first music was printed there in Niger's Grammatica, and that he was responsible for several of the music types used there.

The marshaled evidence, though far from proof, supports the hypothesis of transmission of music printing in linear fashion to future practitioners The current state of knowledge about music printers, publishers, and typecutters makes it difficult to distinguish between their activities and to allocate responsibility for music types The hypothesis promotes an awareness that the reinvention of music printing in neighboring cities is less plausible than shared knowledge of the technique among printers trained in shops where music printing took place Italian incunabula printed from music type reached a peak of quality in types, printing, and marketing that allowed them to dominate the international market for liturgical books in the late fifteenth century Printing began in Mainz, music printing began in or near the diocese of Constance in southern Germany or Switzerland, and Italy's music printing began in Rome, but Venice provided 27 For the Venetian, see Appendix i, no 2 the site of the prodigious activity of the last decade of the century Italy printed two-fifths of all music incunabula, and Venice alone printed about one-fifth Thirty-eight music types were used in Italy, twenty-five of them used in Venice and probably produced there Persuasive factors attracted the international pool of talent that contributed to

printed music books The political and monetary stability of the Republic of Venice made it a good risk for capital investment at a time when southern Germany was going through upheavals The metallurgy industry in Venice that supported a large shipbuilding industry was competitive with the technology of any other European city At that time it may have been the richest city in the world and had risk capital to finance publications for international circulation The Venetian shipping routes to the west and land routes to eastern European countries were well established A highly developed system of privileges may well have prevented other Italian cities from competing in printing and distributing books Italians such as Petrucci and Aldo Manuzio emigrated from the Papal States to the Republic of Venice to take advantage of its attractions The city fathers made it possible for immigrants to acquire citizenship quickly so that they could compete in the central marketplace of Europe But without the talents of creative individuals, the growth of early music printing could not have taken place The inventor of movable metal music type remains elusive, but identification has been made and the role clarified of many of the small

group of printers, publishers, and typefounders who began to print music books in Italy From lists and classification of Italian editions and types, a new picture emerges of a well-developed industry that brought double-impression music type to a peak by the end of the century Recognizable in Italian music types are solutions to problems of printing music notation and staves that still form the substance of today's few music types Much remains to be learned from examination of other copies of the books described, by seeking the answers to the right questions in archival documents, and by establishing lists of editions and classifying types for other countries in Europe Already indisputable is the major significance of Italy's contribution to the early history of music printing.