Critica Musica

Essays in Honour of Paul Brainard

J. Knowles

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134384259
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Media & Performing Arts
• Sous-sujet: Performing Arts

This is Volume 18 of eighteen in a book series on Musicology. Originally published in 1996, this is a collection of essays in honor or Paul Brainard. Critica Musica-thinking critically about music-is at the heart of Paul Brainard's long career, and of his legacy to his students, colleagues, and friends. As a scholar, performer, and teacher, Professor Brainard has embodied a thorough, meticulous, and reasoned approach to music and scholarship that has set a high standard for all who have come in contact with him.

Twins, Cousins, and Heirs: Relationships among Editions of Music Printed in Sixteenth-Century Venice

Mary S. Lewis

In the middle years of the sixteenth century, the two leading Venetian music printers, Antonio Gardano and Girolamo Scotto, frequently published the same music—even the same collections of pieces—at approximately the same time, and at other times produced new editions of each other’s work within a year or two after the previous edition had appeared.

Many questions have arisen regarding the relationship of these similar editions. We do not know if Gardano or Scotto ever jobbed out projects to each other, if they copied each other’s publications, or if they obtained their music through different channels. Sorting out the relationships among these sources should contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of music publishing in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, and of the way these printers chose, gathered, edited, printed, promoted, and distributed the music they dispersed all over Europe. We can then form a better picture of the nature of the repertory published in Venice, and about the printers’ sources of supply.

Since we have no documentary evidence in the form of agreements, letters, contracts, or lawsuits regarding the paired or similar editions, we must turn to the sources themselves for clues about their relationship, which can best be found by comparing the readings of some of the pieces they hold in common. Such a comparison may tell us if one publisher indeed copied the work of the other verbatim, or if more complex processes were involved. Presumably, the closer the correspondence of readings between two editions, the more likely the possibility one was copied—with or without permission—from the other. Heretofore only Thomas Bridges has worked to any extent on the readings, primarily those of the editions of Arcadelt’s first book of madrigals.¹ My own work in this area is far from complete, and this report is preliminary, but I believe we can learn something from it of the dynamics of the music publishing process in Venice.

Interpretations of The Related Editions

Table 1 lists in chronological order the closely-related pairs or groups of editions that the two printers produced from 1539 through 1550. Scholars have ventured a variety of opinions regarding the implications of these closely-related publications. At one extreme are those who suggest that Gardano and Scotto were involved in cooperative ventures, farming out work to each other as necessary, or at least that they coexisted in a state of laissez-faire. The opposite, and until recently more widely-held view, has represented them as pirates, plagiarizing each other’s material in a bitter and protracted rivalry to gain the upper hand in a lucrative business.²

One of the first to address the problem of the paired editions was Robert Eitner, who wrote in 1907:

Although the publishers themselves again and again acquired a printing privilege…it wa...