Early Printed Music and Material Culture in Central and Western Europe

Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, Grantley McDonald, Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl, Grantley McDonald

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367359539
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000387087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

This book presents a varied and nuanced analysis of the dynamics of the printing, publication, and trade of music in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries across Western and Northern Europe. Chapters consider dimensions of music printing in Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy, showing how this area of inquiry can engage a wide range of cultural, historical and theoretical issues. From the economic consequences of the international book trade to the history of women music printers, the contributors explore the nuances of the interrelation between the materiality of print music and cultural, aesthetic, religious, legal, gender and economic history. Engaging with the theoretical turns in the humanities towards material culture, mobility studies and digital research, this book offers a wealth of new insights that will be relevant to researchers of early modern music and early print culture alike.

Part I
Type

1
The pioneers of mensural music printing in German-speaking lands: networks and type repertoria

Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl

Soon after Ottaviano Petrucci started producing polyphonic music books by using a multiple-impression technique, some German printers attempted to seize a share of the same market. Music printing was still an exciting new enterprise with a yet uncertain expectation of success, and only a handful of printers took the risk of producing fonts for mensural notation. They began this new line of their business in the awareness that this product required a higher degree of technical effort and workers knowledgeable about music. In this chapter I will introduce these men, discuss the kinds of repertoire and sources they published, and describe and compare their music fonts. As a contribution to cultural material studies, I offer a type repertory of early German music fonts for printing mensural notation through multiple impression, as Mary Kay Duggan did for music incunabula and Donald W. Krummel for the single-impression technique in the same area.¹

Background and overview

When German printers first used a multiple-impression process to print mensural music in 1507, the technique had already been known in German-speaking territories for decades. Starting with the Gutenberg workshop, printers produced many books with pages set in at least two colours. At this early stage, this printing practice concerned mainly liturgical books, such as missals, breviaries, psalters or agendas. Colour was used for initials, for important words on the title page and in continuous text, and for long instructional sections (rubrics), to embellish and to structure the book. Some printers even specialised in printing illustrations in many colours.² The challenge for the pressmen was to place the paper on the tympan in such a way that the second impression in the other colour was perfectly aligned (‘in register’) with the first. The difficulty of this process is indicated by the survival of misprinted pages that were not discarded but incorporated into a book.³ It was only a small step to printing chant melodies in double-impression technique: instead of letter types, notational shapes were cast and composed like words, not in a single line but within a two-dimensional space. Black text and black notes were printed together, and in a second impression the staff in red ink and red text and initials were added (or the other way round). This was no different from the regular process for printing liturgical books, but required extra types, a careful typesetter and a knowledgeable editor or proofreader.⁴ In rare cases the name of the editor is indicated in the colophon.⁵

Nevertheless, it took about twenty years after the invention of letter-printing before the appearance of the first edition with printed chant notation in double impression, the so-called ‘Constance Gradual’.⁶ It took another thirty years until this technique was applied to polyphonic music in mensural notation. Before this time, we know of seventy-eight liturgical books printed in several cities within the German-speaking lands. Leading the list is Augsburg (26 editions, all by Erhard Ratdolt), followed by Nuremberg (10 editions), Basel (9 editions), Würzburg (6), Strasbourg and Bamberg (4), Leipzig and Speyer (3), Vienna and Lübeck (2).⁷ It is remarkable that Mainz, the cradle of printing, is not represented in this list.⁸ Obviously music printing was not part of the agenda of the workshops of this town.

Although one might expect that the development of polyphonic music printing should have started in workshops experienced in printing chant notation, this was not the case. Figure 1.1 provides an overview of all seven printers who pioneered this new business, arranged chronologically by the date of their first polyphonic edition, from Mewes to Ruff. Their output within the period 1507–1539 is indicated on a horizontal time axis, with the places of printing added on the right or within the bar. Also here Augsburg is dominant, but Nuremberg does not appear at all. Mainz, however, is very present.

Figure 1.1 Printers and printing production through time.

The visualisation of the production exemplifies that two groups of printers can be distinguished: ‘one-shot printers’, and those who were active over a longer period of time, namely, Erhard Oeglin, who printed five known editions between 1507 and about 1512/1513; and Peter Schöffer the Younger, who produced sixteen known editions between 1512 and 1539.⁹ Within thirty-three years, only twenty-six editions with mensural notation were produced in German-speaking lands, or – perhaps better – have survived from this area.¹⁰ We must remember that further editions have disappeared without trace.¹¹ But even if we assume a 50% rate of loss, the number of musical editions is still quite small for this time span. However, these books cover a broad range of repertoire: masses, motets, Magnificat settings, songs, hymns and polyphonic ode settings, in many cases arranged in partbooks, but also in choirbook layout, some humanist books, a pamphlet and two broadsheets (see Appendix 1.2).

The individual printers

A start in Basel: Gregor Mewes

One of the first men who experimented with techniques to print polyphonic music was Gregor Mewes, a printer from northern Germany who worked in Basel, from 1504 at the latest, and who died in late 1516 or after.¹² At this time, Basel was a centre of book production, and workshops here had been printing chant in double impression since the early 1480s.¹³ As Birgit Lodes has shown, Mewes was an apprentice in the workshop of Jacob Wolff von Pforzheim, who was also active in music printing. Until then, Wolff had only printed music from woodcuts.¹⁴ Mewes might have profited from the fact that the networks between the Basel printers were aware of experiments with the technical challenges of production. Nevertheless, Mewes must have been an extraordinary personality, who put everything into exploring a new field and taking great financial risks when he published his only known music book in the first half of the year 1507. Mewes’ output was a set of four partbooks containing four masses by Jacob Obrecht. The books reveal little about their circumstances of origin, since they lack a colophon and a dedication.

Figure 1.2 shows one page from this book, displaying its neat music fonts, including ligatures and careful layout. In the lowest staff of the example, Mewes even extended the stem of the longa with breve rests so that it would match the length of the other note stems. A letter to the readers informs us that Mewes has worked on this exceptional work ‘summa lucubratione’, during the night (if we take his words literally). This common expression from Cicero means that the reader cannot blame the author (or, in this case, the printer) if the book is not perfect, since it is merely the product of one’s leisure hours, however diligent.¹⁵ Also the fact that the author of the letter mentions the printer not by his regular name – Mewes is not a surname but a northern German nickname for Bartholomäus or Matthäus (Mäus → Mewes) – indicates that it was a personal enterprise.¹⁶ A few years later, Mewes would have his own print shop, where he printed under his proper name Gregorius Bartholomäus. Birgit Lodes, who deduced the identity of Mewes and the date of the publication, has demonstrated that he had had no models for this experiment, neither Petrucci nor any other sources.¹⁷

Figure 1.2 Gregor Mewes. Concentus harmonici quattuor missarum (Basel, [1507]), vdm 630, Tenor partbook.

Source: Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, KK III 23a, fol. A3^r.

Furthermore, neither he nor any other printer in Basel produced any known edition of polyphony. It looks to me like a masterstroke, a personal satisfaction for the printer who was able to succeed technically. But it also could have been a financial failure, since we do not know if there was a ready market for a collection of demanding polyphonic music in the area, and Mewes might have stopped printing music for this reason. In any case, it had no consequences for the development of a new line of business in the city.

Another start in Augsburg: Erhard Oeglin

Mewes might have been the first to print polyphonic music in German-speaking countries, but Erhard Oeglin (c. 1470–1520) claimed the credit. He, too, learnt his craft in Basel, but then moved to Augsburg, where he established a small printing workshop on his own in 1502. This imperial city was another centre of printing. Although it was not the seat of a university, it had an active intellectual and cultural life, based on the clergy and mercantile and banking families, prominently the Fuggers and Welsers, who benefited from the frequent residences and the ambitious enterprises of Emperor Maximilian I. The Augsburg printers focussed on books with woodcut illustrations...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and musical examples
• List of tables and appendices
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: music among the bibliographic disciplines
• Part I Type
• Part II Notes
• Part III Music printing at Wittenberg
• Part IV Music printing in the Low Countries
• Part V Printing privileges
• Part VI The book trade
• Index