Music Publishing in Europe 1600-1900

No invention ever has had greater impact on how music found its way from the composer to the public than the printing of music. Before that invention, every copy of a musical work was basically unique, since, in principle, every music manuscript was different from every other. In contrast, music printing made it possible to produce multiple copies that were in principle identical all at once - not to order, but on the expectation of sales and profit. Both copying music by hand and producing editions on the printer's press are ways to disseminate music, ways to publish music, in the sense of making music public and publicly available. This book is conceived as an introduction to the field of music printing and publishing as an area of musicological enquiry and research, as a discussion of the concepts that are at issue if one studies the domain. Each chapter deals with the concepts and phenomena that are of importance in a certain subdomain within the general field of music printing and publishing. The first two chapters discuss the field's Basic Concepts and Historical Sources respectively. The three chapters that follow all deal with elements in the process of music publishing: Technological Aspects, Economic Aspects, and Legal Aspects. A second group of three chapters is concerned with the chain of communication between composer and consumer: Composers and Publishers, Publishers and Publishers, and Publishers and Buyers. Between the chapters on the various aspects and the ones on dramatis personae there is a chapter addressing the question of What Do Surviving Copies of Early Printed Music Tell Us? This book on Music Publishing in Europe 1600-1900 is an outcome of the activities of a research group on "The Circulation of Music" that formed a part of the research project "Musical Life in Europe 1600-1900", launched by the European Science Foundation.