5 - Music books

Summary

The patent granted to William Byrd and Thomas Tallis in 1575 to print both music books (except Psalm books) and ruled music paper draws attention to the close relationship throughout the whole of this period between printed and manuscript production of music books. Any brief account of music books in this period must be indebted to the ground-breaking and detailed work of D. W. Krummel. Krummel writes of music printing; but this is by no means the whole story for music books. The difficulties associated with the patent, the special skills of the typesetters and the special founts required, the smallness of the market (especially early in the period) and the costliness of printed music meant that much of the music circulating, especially in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, was in manuscript. Indeed, some genres, such as cathedral music and keyboard music, were barely attempted in print at all. When printed and manuscript books for the period are considered together it becomes clear that their history is intertwined and that, for both categories, contents, layout and method of production were determined by the social contexts of their composition and their audience. For music, perhaps more than for other kinds of texts, social issues of performance, occasion and patronage were significant in determining what was printed, what was copied, and how music circulated. This is true for all genres of music: even the seemingly obvious distinction, between sacred and secular, is blurred in, for example, manuscript collections made for private, family use which include both kinds together, or in the reformed Church’s printed Psalm books where the early Psalm tunes were adapted from courtly and ballad tunes.