FROM MANUSCRIPTSTO PRINTED MUSIC

Ottaviano Petrucci and his invention

Lecture by Andrea Angelini - Italy

Printing?

When we think to the word “printing” or “print” in general, what comes in mind? How important is printing in our life? Does it effect practically everything that we do on a day to day basis?

I believe that it does, regardless of our profession in life! Weather we are reading notes on a piece of music from Vivaldi’s Gloria or reading at the menu at the restaurant!

The History of Printing Music

However, in this lecture I am not going to talk about the history of printing verbal text, but instead the

HISTORY OF PRINTING MUSIC

Difference in printing

There is a difference between the two types of verbal text printing and music printing. In a verbal text, the letters on the page, which form words, represent a concept to be conveyed by the eye to the brain. In music, the notes on the page are primarily an instruction to bring into action lungs or fingers.

The Manuscripts

Before the advent of Gutenberg and his printing press, all music was copied out by hand, an expensive and time-consuming process. Consequently, little music prior to the 16th century remains; the majority that is extant is sacred music of the Catholic church. The priests and monks of the church spent large amounts of time painstakingly copying the chants for every day of the church year.

The Manuscripts (secular music)

We have very little secular music prior to 1500. The collections we do have were owned by wealthy noblemen, such as the Squarcialupi Codex, of Italian Trecento music, or the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music. (the manneristic compositional school centered around Avignon at the end of 1400)

The Manuscripts (secular music)

Squarcialupi Codex Chantilly Codex

What are illuminated manuscripts?

"Illustrated manuscripts" or "illuminated books," refers to books produced in the Medieval era that were filled with illustrations and texts. In order to produce a manuscript, medieval artisans first had to acquire animal skins. Vellum (calfskin) and Parchment (lambskin) were widely used in the Medieval era. These skins were cleaned, stretched, and cut to the desired measurements. The final stage of the process included lining the page, enabling the writer to produce orderly text. Empty space for illustrations were also set aside, as well as preliminary drawings. Pages were later attached to a cover (usually a leather binding) and closed with a buckle or rope.

Technique

The artists themselves used several tools during the process of illumination, including: compasses, a stylus, knives (used for scratching out mistakes and smoothing down animal skin), graphite (used for preliminary drawings), and various brushes for applying colored inks or paints. The ink or paint was sometimes stored in horns on the artist’s table, enabling him easy access and storage of materials.

This manuscript is one of the most beautiful and elaborately illuminated chant manuscripts of the Capella Sistina collection. It was written for the great patron of the arts, Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) (1513-21)

The final result

Johannes Gutenberg

Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398 - February 3, 1468) was a German goldsmith and printer who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded the most important event of the modern period. It played a key role in the development of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Scientific Revolution and layed the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

The two “facts” of Gutenberg

Printing press (1455)

Movable types

Manuscript and first printed bookAn example of Gothic textura script from a 15th-century manuscript. HRC manuscript collections.

Large initial letter and rubrications, Gutenberg Bible, vol I, fol. 311r.

The first printed music book

The first printed book containing music was the Mainz Psalter, produced by Guttenberg's successors, Fust and Schoeffer, which also has the historical distinction of being the first book to be printed in color. Notice the careful wording of the previous sentence. The Mainz Psalter did not actually print the music. Rather, the music was added by hand after the pages were printed.

An early example of music notes printed without the lines is Franciscus Niger's Grammatica of 1480

Different ways to print music books

The next steps

And so, early printers of music were able to avoid all issues of music typography by simply creating woodcuts of the music, as if the music were freeform illustrations, and this was done quite frequently. For example, Franciscus Niger's Grammatica of 1480 (an example of typeset notes without staff lines) was reprinted in 1485 using woodcuts instead. In 1487, the first complete polyphonic composition printed with staves was created, the Musices Opusculum printed by Ugo Ruggerio in Bologna.

Printing with woodcuts, however, had many technical difficulties. First, mistakes made in carving the wood were difficult, if not impossible to correct. Second, the frail nature of wood (in comparison to metal) meant that woodcuts could only be used for a limited number of printings before staff lines and note stems began to break off. This was made even more difficult by the nature of music notation, which is primarily made up of thin lines (unlike pictorial illustration which is more flexible). Finally, woodcuts were expensive to produce and required skilled craftsmen. For all these reasons, woodcuts were most often limited to small musical examples, such as might be used for music theory textbooks.

Systems using multiple impressions

Early examples of printing both staves and notes with moveable type used multiple impressions to print a single page. For example, a first impression would be used for the words, a second for the staff lines, and a third for the notes. This could be reduced to two impressions: words and notes first and staff lines last.

Ottaviano Petrucci, a true printer

Ottaviano Petrucci (18 June 1466 – 7 May 1539) was an Italian printer. Petrucci is credited with producing, in 1501, the first book of sheet music printed from movable type: Odhecaton, a collection of chansons. He also published numerous works by the most highly regarded composers of the Renaissance, including Josquin des Prez and Antoine Brumel.

Petrucci method

Petrucci was the first printer to use movable type, the first to print in quantity, and the first to print the polyphonic music which was the predominant style at the time.

Petrucci's technique required three impressions; each sheet of music would be run through the presses once for the staves, once for the music, and once for the words. Petrucci was highly successful at this enterprise; his publications are quite exact and beautifully executed. However, other printers using this method sometimes offset their prints slightly, which could result in notes being printed too high or too low on the staff – and thus jarringly incorrect for performers. Petrucci's method was soon superseded by the innovations attributed to Pierre Attaignant, who developed and popularized the single-impression method of printing in 1528.

The first edition of the Odhecaton (Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A) does not survive complete, and the exact publication date is not known, but it includes a dedication dated May 15, 1501.

Harmonice Musices Odhecaton

Odhecaton: Nenciozza mia (Japart)

Dedication of the Odhecaton

"Printing has lately become an art in which many fine

gentlemen have been trying to outdo each other every day, but

no one has ever been able to find a way to print measured

music. Yet we can neither praise God nor celebrate weddings

without such music, which is indeed called for at every joyous

occasion in life," Petrucci wrote in the dedication of the Odhecaton,

published in 1501. The word odhecaton is a combination of two

Greek words, ode, meaning "song" and hecaton, meaning "one

hundred." In fact, there are ninety-six three-, four-, and five-part

compositions in the collection.

Pierre Attaignant

Before 1527 Pierre Attaignant (1492-1551) began using a newly invented moveable music type, in which a fragment of a musical staff was combined with a note on each piece of type. He used the new type in a book of chansons, Chansons Nouvelles (1528). Because Attaignant's single-impression method halved the time and labour formerly needed to print music, it was quickly adopted throughout Europe. Attaignant was the first to use the printing press to achieve mass production in music publishing.