The Music Of The Early Printers

Music of The Early Printers

Many of the Renaissance printers who played an important role in the advance of printing were also accomplished musicians, composers and arrangers, and used the new printing process developed by Gutenberg and others to publish and distribute music. This was the first stages of music being made widely available to the public.

The spread of instrumental and vocal music during the Renaissance was in large part due to a number of enterprising music printers, many of whom were active musicians and composers and played a direct role in arranging the pieces which they published. The most prominent among them were the Italian Ottaviano Petrucci of Venice, the Parisian Pierre Attaingnant, the Flemish Teilman Susato and later the Venetian Antonio Gardano whose sons later went on to form one of most important music publishing firms of the era.

Petrucci is said to be the printer who produced the first collection of music using the new Gutenberg moveable type process. He worked with a process known as "multiple-impression printing" - one press run for the lines, another for the notes. This was able to produce excellent quality and results, but was time consuming. Attaingnant was responsible for the development and spread of "single-impression music printing" - printing music from type at one impression - staves, notes and text together rather than separately, as was previously the case. This process cut time and costs considerably, and enabled Attaingnant, and eventually all others, to produce a wide range of music. This was the beginning of modern music publishing and printing.

During the early developments of printing, a large amount of excellent music was created and printed.

This product is a collection of MP3 versions of some of this music.
You can listen to MP3 samples on the product page linked above:

Attaignant - Branle MP3 sample
Attaignant - Jan petit Jan Jehan L'Heritier
Attaignant - Magdalena
Attaignant - Tourdion
Attaignant Preludium
Attaignant_Magnificat
Moderne - Branle
Moderne - Pavanne
Petrucci - Ala Audience
Petrucci - Antoine Busnois
Petrucci - Danse
Petrucci - James James James
Petrucci - Johannes Ghiselin Verbonnet, La Spagna
Petrucci - Josquin, Cela sans plus
Petrucci - Josquin, La Bernardina
Petrucci -Anonymous, Dit le Burguygnon
Matheo Pagano - Song
Susato - Das Ganze
Susato - Doulce memoire - MP3 sample
Susato - Een meysken eens voerby passeerde
Susato - J'ay si forte battaille
Susato - Si ton amour
Susato - Pavan