PROTECTED PUBLICATIONS: THE IMPERIAL AND SAXON PRIVILEGES FOR PRINTED MUSIC, 1550–1700

Abstract

In the decades around 1600 many privileges for printed music were issued by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Elector of Saxony. Such privileges gave a bookseller or author an exclusive right to publish specified works for a limited period (usually ten years). The privileges threatened confiscation of any unauthorised copies, and fines for anyone caught printing or selling them. This article offers the first systematic study of archival material documenting the privileges for music, as preserved in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna, and the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden. It reconstructs the ritualistic procedure for obtaining a privilege, analyses how composers justified their applications for privileges, and asks whether privileges gave effective protection against unauthorised editions. Revising previous interpretations of the privilege system as an early form of copyright, I instead argue that privileges enhanced the commercial and symbolic value of printed music.

Printed music around 1600 in German-speaking lands was partly a product of early capitalism, and partly a symbol of authority, prestige and skill. On the one hand, John Kmetz has interpreted sixteenth-century music publishers as business people who took the risk of producing multiple copies and sought to recoup their investment through sales. ¹ On the other hand, much printed music held symbolic meanings for composers, dedicatees and owners; such books might circulate in a gift economy, being offered in the expectation of a reward. ² These dual functions are encapsulated in Royston Gustavson’s notion that every stage in the printing of a music book was intended to create value, whether financial profit or an enhanced reputation; ³ they also reflect the tension in the period between early capitalism and older ideals of serving the common good. ⁴ Yet scholars can struggle to locate specific items of printed music on this spectrum between commercial and symbolic value. Generally all that survives are the printed books themselves; only rarely is there archival evidence of how a music book was funded or how well it sold.

Some light, however, can be shed on the commercial and symbolic functions of printed music via the privileges granted for such publications. These privileges were favours conferred by rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperor or the Elector of Saxony, giving a bookseller or author an exclusive right to publish specified works for a limited period (usually ten years). The privilege threatened confiscation of unauthorised copies, and fines for anyone caught printing or selling them. Unlike the patent for music printing in late Tudor England, privileges in German lands were not monopolies over the entire trade; nor did they confer rights involving the import of books or sale of printed music paper. ⁵ In many cases, imperial or Saxon privileges protected a publisher’s or composer’s investment in a specific edition, and may indicate genres or authors in commercial demand. Other privileges, however, were marks of prestige, granting an edition some of the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor or the Elector of Saxony.

Hundreds of music books from the decades around 1600 indicate on the title page that they were protected by a privilege, using such rubrics as ‘Cum gratia et privilegio’ or ‘Mit churfürstlicher Befreyhung’. Yet such statements rarely reveal who held the privilege or its duration. Nor do they give any information about how privileges were granted and whether they were enforced. Furthermore these rubrics cannot always be taken at face value: an imperial edict of 1608 complained that some books falsely claimed on their title pages to hold a privilege. ⁶

More informative are the surviving archival records, including application letters and the drafts and fair copies of the privileges themselves. These documents show the legal justifications for privileges, illuminating the relationship between composers and princely authority. In 1962 a selection of these documents was transcribed and published by the legal historian Hansjörg Pohlmann, whose monograph was until now the main study of privileges for music. ⁷ Unfortunately, Pohlmann’s work is flawed by his limited awareness of publishing practices in the period, and by his teleological interpretation of privileges as anticipations of the modern copyright system. He declared these legal instruments were ‘rights of protection for creators, a formal confirmation of the exclusive publication rights of authors already won by virtue of their creative work, for the purpose of faster, more effective enforcement against copyright infringements’. ⁸ In his analysis of privilege documents, Pohlmann highlighted phrases that apparently anticipated later notions of an author’s economic rights (the right to profit from a work) and moral rights (the right to have the author’s name associated with the work). ⁹ He even compared the ‘Cum gratia et privilegio’ rubric on a title page with the © sign. ¹⁰ Such an anachronistic viewpoint, however, obscured the fundamental characteristic of privileges as exceptional favours granted by a prince, rather than inherent rights held by all authors. Moreover, Pohlmann’s focus on composers as creators overlooked the fact that privileges were mainly given to those who had invested financially in a book, including authors who published their own works.

This article offers the first systematic study of archival records for printing privileges relating to music, as issued by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Elector of Saxony between 1550 and 1700. Part of the article draws on documents in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna, guided by the catalogue of the Impressorialakten compiled by Hans-Joachim Koppitz, who identified (but did not comment upon) many sources unavailable to Pohlmann. ¹¹ The greater part of the article, however, is based on a thorough search of uncatalogued documents in the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden, including many previously unknown letters from composers of the early seventeenth century. Although the archival records in both Vienna and Dresden are incomplete – covering only a fraction of the books that list privileges on their title pages – they reveal many of the negotiations involved in publishing a music book. They also allow a closer understanding of the relationship between the symbolic and commercial aspects of the music trade.

This article is a pendant to a book-length study of musical authorship which examines the discourses of ownership used by Lutheran composers in the seventeenth century. ¹² Here I analyse my archival discoveries to reconstruct the workings of the privilege system and its implications for the music trade of the period. The article begins by categorising the composers and musical genres that are known to have received privileges; it also introduces the types and terms of privileges usually encountered. I interpret the application process for privileges as a symbolic performance of princely power, in which the applicants had to submit to the absolute authority of the ruler. In my analysis of composers’ petitions for privileges, I replace Pohlmann’s teleological interpretations with more historically nuanced notions of authorship, showing how musicians sought remuneration for the labour and capital they invested in their publications. The archival records documenting privileges also illuminate the costs faced by composers who published their own music, and the role of intermediaries including women in the making of posthumous editions. Finally, the article considers whether privileges offered effective protection against unauthorised editions, with reference to Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein and Heinrich Albert. The appendices present transcriptions and translations of a selection of newly discovered documents, including petitions from Seth Calvisius, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Michael Praetorius and Schein.

PRIVILEGES FOR PRINTED MUSIC

In the mosaic of jurisdictions over German-speaking lands in the early seventeenth century, printing privileges were most frequently granted by the Holy Roman Emperor or the Elector of Saxony. ¹³ An imperial privilege was valid throughout the Holy Roman Empire, but had particular relevance to the twice-yearly book fair at Frankfurt am Main, which was regulated by the imperial book commission. The commission had powers to confiscate any book sold at the Frankfurt fair that infringed an imperial privilege, and it required booksellers at the fair to display any imperial privileges they held. ¹⁴ A Saxon privilege was valid solely within Electoral Saxony, but gave protection against unauthorised copies at the Leipzig book fair, which was regulated by the Saxon book commission under the command of the Elector. ¹⁵ Consequently Saxon privileges were mainly obtained by publishers and authors from Dresden, Leipzig and Wittenberg, but also sometimes by figures from further afield. Privileges could be obtained in other territories such as Electoral Brandenburg, ¹⁶ but these were generally less sought after because they did not hold jurisdiction over the book fairs.

Table 1 shows musicians active in German-speaking lands between 1550 and 1700 who held imperial printing privileges, as documented by material surviving in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv and selected other archives; Table 2 shows publishers who held imperial printing privileges specifically for music. Of the composers with privileges, some were internationally famous and their publications circulated across and beyond the Empire – notably Orlande de Lassus, who had the unusual honour of a perpetual imperial privilege, complementing the privileges he received from the French king from 1575 onwards. ¹⁷ Other holders of imperial privileges presumably gained these through their connections with the Habsburg court. Hans Leo Hassler, who gained a privilege in 1591, would later be ennobled by Rudolf II and named as an imperial servant; ¹⁸ and Pietro Andrea Ziani, who successfully petitioned for a privilege for his Sonate opus 7, was Kapellmeister for dowager Empress Eleonora from 1662 to 1669. Imperial privileges also protected music published in free cities that were subordinate only to the emperor, as with the privileges obtained by the Hamburg musician Johann Schop, or by the Hamburg publisher Georg Ludwig Frobenius for the music of Hieronymus Praetorius.

Table 1 Composers who held imperial printing privileges 1550–1700, where archival evidence survives

Table 2 Publishers who held imperial printing privileges for musical items 1550–1700, as documented by evidence in Österreichisches Staatsarchiv

Table 3 shows composers who held Saxon printing privileges, as documented by newly discovered papers in the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Table 4 shows publishers who held Saxon privileges specifically for music. Although music books from the 1570s onwards mention Saxon privileges on their title pages, ¹⁹ the first Saxon privileges for musicians to be documented archivally date from 1594. Saxon privileges were mostly held by musicians from that territory, including composers connected to the Dresden court such as Schütz (Kapellmeister c. 1618 to c. 1656), Michael Praetorius (acting Kapellmeister, c. 1613–17) and Caspar Kittel (court organist in the mid-1630s). There are also town musicians such as Calvisius (Leipzig Thomaskantor from 1594 to 1615), Schein (Leipzig Thomaskantor from 1616 to 1630), Michael Lohr (cantor at Dresden’s Kreuzkirche from 1625 to 1654) and Hammerschmidt (organist in Freiberg and later in Zittau).

Table 3 Composers who held Saxon printing privileges 1590–1700, as documented by evidence in Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv

Table 4 Saxon privileges granted to publishers for musical items 1600–1700, as documented by evidence in Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv

Occasionally Saxon privileges were acquired by composers working further afield, for instance in 1622 by Johannes Schultz (organist at the Brunswick–Lüneburg court in Dannenberg), or in 1658 by Lorenz Erhard (cantor in Frankfurt am Main). Such musicians may have wanted to protect their publications at the Leipzig book fair, in the same way that publishers outside Saxony sometimes acquired Saxon privileges. Alternatively, these musicians may have sought their privileges as a way to gain patronage from the Elector of Saxony: shortly after Schultz applied for a privilege, he dedicated his Musicalischer Lüstgarte to the Elector; ²⁰ and Erhard’s privilege protected a hymnal that set the chorale tunes as used in Saxony. ²¹

Otherwise, the tendency for Saxon privileges to be held by local composers and publishers confirms the hypothesis that the German music trade in this period mainly served regional markets. ²² None of the musicians with Saxon privileges also held imperial privileges, apart from Schütz, who in 1637 gained a five-year imperial privilege (renewed in 1642 for a further ten years). Schütz’s shift to imperial privileges may indicate his growing international fame and his desire to promote his music beyond Saxon lands; or it may have been motivated by his efforts to prevent unauthorised reprints (as discussed below).

The musical genres protected by privileges reflect the general trends in the music trade, but also indicate those genres deemed to have particular commercial or symbolic value. From the 1590s to 1640s privileges mainly covered sacred polyphony, the genre that dominated the music trade in those decades and that held substantial prestige for composers. After the 1640s, as the printing of polyphonic music started to decline, privileges were rarely held by composers. Instead they were mainly sought by publishers to protect hymnals (such as Johannes Crüger’s Praxis pietatis melica) and songbooks (such as Adam Krieger’s Arien) (see Table 4 above). Both genres appealed to the domestic market and were likely to be reprinted; secular songbooks, although often surviving in few copies nowadays, appeared regularly in inventories of personal libraries and may have been purchased for their poetry as much as their music. ²³ As the final section of this article shows, songbooks by Schein and Albert were sufficiently popular to appear in unauthorised editions.

The privileges for instrumental music indicate the changing value attributed to these genres. In the second half of the sixteenth century, several lutenists held imperial privileges for their tablatures, including Melchior Neusidler and Valentin Bakfark (Table 1 above). The Leipzig organist Elias Nikolaus Ammerbach advertised a six-year imperial privilege on the title page of his 1575 keyboard tablature, although no archival evidence exists for it. ²⁴ Such privileges suggest that composers of instrumental music had a high regard for their printed tablatures, which were regularly reprinted and also boosted their professional status. From the seventeenth century, however, no extant books of printed keyboard music or lute music mention a privilege on their title pages (to the best of my knowledge), although in 1662 the Halle organist Wilhelm Hieronymus Stenger gained a Saxon privilege for ‘musicalische werklein durch . . . Kupfferstich’ (engraved pieces presumably for keyboard, of which no trace survives). ²⁵ Ensemble instrumental music was almost never covered by privileges, apart from a few publications by musicians associated with the imperial court such as Ziani’s Sonate (c. 1667) and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s Sonatae unarum fidium, seu a violino solo (1664) (which lists a ten-year imperial privilege on its title page).

Overall, it must be emphasised that archival records do not survive for all the privileges granted for music. Nonetheless the documents summarised in Tables 1 to 4 show how the organisation and regulation of the music trade operated on regional lines, with imperial privileges mainly used by composers connected to the Habsburg family, and with Saxon composers focusing on a local market. The archival records also indicate the musical genres deemed to have particular commercial or symbolic value, and document a number of planned publications that apparently never saw the light of day.

TYPES AND TERMS OF PRIVILEGES

Whether issued by the Holy Roman Emperor or the Elector of Saxony, privileges had a formulaic structure and set of provisions, into which various details about the specific book were inserted. Privileges usually belonged to one of two types: special or general. Most frequently issued was the privilegium speciale for one or more designated books, as listed in the application and in the privilege itself. ²⁶ The privilege may specify the title of the publication or may give a more general description that nonetheless can be identified as an extant book.

Less often granted were general privileges, which for their duration protected all past, present and future works by a named author or publisher. Such privileges were a sign of a ruler’s special favour. Indeed, in 1594 a Saxon ordinance specified that general privileges should not be used, because bookdealers had ‘printed many unnecessary and unfit books’ under their aegis. ²⁷ In 1616 general privileges were again rescinded in Saxony, possibly because the Elector sought to maximise the income he received from applications for special privileges. ²⁸ Some musicians consequently had their applications for general privileges rejected. In 1601 the Weimar cantor Melchior Vulpius requested Saxon protection ‘for my current and future compositions’, ²⁹ but received a privilege only for a specific work (‘motets for six, seven, eight and more voices, from the Psalms of David and the usual Sunday Gospel readings’, probably a reference to his Pars prima cantionum sacrarum). ³⁰ Ten years later, Vulpius again applied for a Privilegium generale and this time received one, covering ‘the current songs setting Gospel sayings for Sundays and all future compositions, even those not based on biblical texts’. ³¹ In 1617 Schein apparently had no difficulty obtaining a privilege for his current and future musical works, perhaps because he published these himself. But the Elector’s reluctance to grant general privileges was still evident in 1636, when Schütz requested ‘a general privilege for all those musical works, which I intend to prepare for publication with the help of God’. ³² Regardless of his status as court Kapellmeister, Schütz’s request was initially refused, with the draft privilege being solely for ‘the first and second part of his concertos’ (a reference to the Kleine geistliche Concerte). ³³ Subsequently, however, another scribe added a more inclusive reference to ‘his musical works’ (‘seine opera musicalia’). Such negotiations exposed the limits of the favours that princes were prepared to grant in a privilege.

Despite the efforts of rulers to differentiate between special and general privileges, some authors interpreted these documents elastically. Calvisius’s 1594 privilege specified ‘the Latin hymns and all the German songs which are used in the churches and elsewhere’. ³⁴ This apparently referred to his Hymni sacri latini et germanici (Erfurt, 1594), yet that book does not specify a privilege on its title page. Instead the editions of Calvisius’s Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum from 1597 onwards mention his Saxon privilege on their title pages, although this hymnal includes few of the Latin hymns stipulated in the privilege. Indeed in his 1611 application to renew his privilege (see Appendix 1), Calvisius claimed that his initial privilege was for the first edition of his Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum. Either he regarded the Hymni sacri as interchangeable with the Harmonia cantionum, ³⁵ or he used the bibliographical imprecision of the privilege as a way to extend its protection to another book.

Privileges were usually granted for ten years, although in some cases for shorter or longer periods (see Tables 1 to 4 above). The limited duration of privileges signalled that these were not inherent rights; indeed a Saxon edict of 1625 declared that the Elector could revoke a privilege at any time. ³⁶ Privileges in perpetuity were rare, granted only to a few celebrated or well-connected individuals. Lassus is the sole musician known to have held a perpetual imperial privilege, an honour exceeding the ten-year duration of his French privilege. In 1594 the Naumburg musician Abraham Ratz gained a perpetual Saxon privilege for various musical projects including German contrafacta of Jacob Regnart’s Italian part-songs. ³⁷ In 1628 Schein sought a perpetual privilege, asking the Elector of Saxony not merely for a ten-year renewal of his previous privilege, but ‘because my business for the above-named reasons is so poor and slight [to] confirm and extend it infinitely after my death for the benefit of my poor wife and children’ (see Appendix 4). This request – hinting at Schein’s awareness of his mortality, perhaps from his long-standing problems with tuberculosis, gout and kidney stones ³⁸ – was not granted by the Elector. As discussed below, princes gained power and income from granting privileges, and it was therefore in their financial interest to maintain a steady flow of applications.

Another set of standard stipulations concerned the penalties for those who printed or sold unauthorised copies. In imperial and Saxon privileges alike, such infringers were threatened with confiscation of their stock and with a fine (paid half to the ruler, half to the holder of the privilege). The fines were for substantial amounts. Saxon privileges normally specified a fine of one hundred gold (or Rhenish) florins, ³⁹ a sum roughly equivalent to the retail cost of about one hundred sets of partbooks. ⁴⁰ Imperial privileges specified a fine in full-weight unalloyed (Löthiges) gold; the standard penalty was 10 marks, ⁴¹ as stipulated in Johann Schop’s privilege of 1640, but lower penalties were stated in other musicians’ privileges (5 marks in Schütz’s 1637 privilege; 4 marks in Albert’s 1648 privilege).

Uniquely, imperial privileges permitted holders to take the law into their own hands and confiscate unauthorised copies themselves. Albert’s privilege gave him the right ‘with the help and action of each place’s authority, wherever [the pirated copies] are to be found, to confiscate them by his own force, without impediment . . . whereby he shall have committed no crime’. ⁴² Such a provision reflected the Emperor’s status as a supreme power over German territories, but also the difficulties in upholding his edicts in the absence of a coherent apparatus of state. A similar clause is found in Schütz’s 1637 and 1642 imperial privileges. By recognising these formulaic elements in privileges, it is possible to identify the aspects unique to a particular author or book, and thereby to use these legal documents to illuminate the publishing arrangements for specific editions.

APPLYING FOR A PRIVILEGE

As its name suggests, a privilege was not an individual right but a temporary suspension of common law, a sign of special favour by a prince to an individual. Consequently the procedure for obtaining a privilege was highly ritualised, involving the symbolic submission of the applicant to the authority of the prince. In return for the granting of a privilege, the prince typically demanded payment of a fee, the right to censor the books, and a supply of deposit copies.

In the Holy Roman Empire, privilege applications were handled by the imperial chancery (Reichskanzlei); this was the main administrative organ of imperial government and was staffed by lawyers, humanists and career civil servants. ⁴³ Decisions on privileges may have been taken by the vice-chancellor or the chancery secretary, whose signatures appear on the privilege documents. ⁴⁴ In Saxony, applications were managed by the upper consistory (Oberkonsistorium), which was responsible for church discipline and for regulating the book trade via its subsidiary, the Leipzig book commission. It was staffed by clergy (including the senior court chaplain and the superintendent of Dresden’s churches) and jurists who acted as electoral court councillors. The Elector was probably not involved in decisions on applications (although a scribbled note filed with Michael Praetorius’s draft privilege indicates it was ‘most graciously granted’ by the Elector himself); ⁴⁵ the Elector’s signature, as found on some privileges (see Figure 1 below), has not yet been verified as autograph.

As the first step in obtaining a privilege, an individual submitted a petition, normally addressed to the Emperor or Elector as appropriate. The justifications given in these petitions are considered in the section below. In Saxony some applicants evidently presented their submissions in person to the upper consistory: typically their petitions were dated the day before the privilege was drafted, which would have been insufficient time for a letter to travel in the post and be processed by the court administrators. Indeed, Schein’s 1617 application was signed by the composer in Dresden rather than his current place of residence, Leipzig (Appendix 3). Some applicants also lobbied members of the chancery or upper consistory for favourable treatment of their petitions. In 1614 Michael Praetorius wrote to the Dresden chief court chaplain Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg, the assessor on the upper consistory (Appendix 2): the letter states his request for a privilege for the four volumes he planned of Syntagma musicum, ⁴⁶ and mentions that the consistory would shortly receive his other letters (presumably including a petition addressed to the Elector that does not survive).

Figure 1 Fair copy of Saxon privilege issued to Johann Hermann Schein, 17 November 1628. Leipzig, Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, A/4298/2009. Reproduced by permission

Petitions for a privilege were often accompanied by additional material such as a letter of endorsement from a patron or sample pages from the proposed book. Lassus’s 1581 application for an imperial privilege was accompanied by a letter from Wilhelm V of Bavaria, testifying that his Kapellmeister’s request was ‘not unnecessary’, and stating that the privilege would benefit and honour not just Lassus and the House of Bavaria, but also the Emperor and the whole of Christendom. ⁴⁷ Similarly, Johannes Schultz supplemented his 1622 petition for a Saxon privilege with a letter of recommendation from his patron Julius Ernst of Brunswick-Dannenberg. ⁴⁸ Sample material might include handwritten mock-ups of the title page (as in Schütz’s 1627 application for his Becker Psalter, or Lohr’s 1636 application for his Ander Theil . . . KirchenGesänge) or extracts from the printed proofs (the 1679 application for Johann Caspar Horn’s Geistliche Harmonien included a printed copy of the title page of the Winter Theil of that collection). ⁴⁹ Such sample material was not necessarily scrutinised closely. The draft of Hammerschmidt’s 1638 Saxon privilege survives with an unbound partbook of his Musicalischer Andacht Erster Theil for which the pages are uncut, and thus the members of the upper consistory could not have read more than the title page. ⁵⁰

If the chancery or upper consistory reached a favourable decision, a draft privilege was prepared by a secretary; this is the document that usually survives in the imperial or Saxon archives, often with evidence of redrafting (sometimes in more than one hand). In some cases the imperial archives contain merely the letter of application with an official annotation indicating that the privilege was granted. In Saxony a fair copy of the privilege was made on a bifolium and sent to the applicant. Figure 1 shows the fair copy of Schein’s 1628 printing privilege, with the signature and seal of Johann Georg I of Saxony. ⁵¹ The grandeur of these Saxon documents asserted the Elector’s authority, perhaps with the aim of convincing lesser officials to uphold the privilege.

Several aspects of the application procedure emphasised the power of the prince and assisted those rulers who used the privilege system to control the book trade. First, at least some applicants had to pay a fee for a privilege. In the 1520s, the correspondence between Erasmus and Willibald Pirckheimer shows that a payment of ‘twenty gold pieces’ was usually necessary to secure a general imperial privilege, but the fee could be avoided by petitioning sympathetic officials. ⁵² With regard to Saxon privileges, Jürgen Gramlich has stated there is no evidence of fees being charged; ⁵³ yet the documents uncovered for this article suggest otherwise. Michael Praetorius’s 1614 letter to the Saxon chief court chaplain refers to the payment of a ‘chancery fee’, a task he had delegated to the Dresden court instrumentalist Michael Mölich (Appendix 2). At the time, Praetorius was working as guest Kapellmeister at the Saxon court (although the privilege document uses his official title of Kapellmeister at the Brunswick court), so it is slightly surprising that he expected to pay a fee. Other applicants for Saxon privileges stressed their loyal service to the Wettin dynasty, perhaps in an attempt to avoid a fee. Schein’s 1617 and 1628 petitions referred to his four years as a chorister at the electoral court chapel and his short spell as Kapellmeister for the Ernestine branch of the family in Weimar (Appendices 3 and 4). Yet Praetorius’s letter raises the possibility that even musicians with official Saxon appointments, such as Caspar Kittel and Heinrich Schütz, paid a fee to obtain their privileges.

Princely authority was further enhanced by the attempts at censorship that often accompanied the granting of a privilege. Most territories had a system of censorship by church or university authorities, whereby books were approved prior to publication. ⁵⁴ Applicants for imperial privileges sometimes submitted certificates to show their books had been approved by the censor in their local jurisdiction, and from the late 1570s imperial privileges often included a proviso that the books contain nothing damaging to the Catholic faith. ⁵⁵ Imperial privileges drafted in Latin occasionally show attempts by the chancery to censor the texts of vocal music. The 1588 imperial privilege to Jacobus Handl for his ‘church songs’ (canti ecclesiastici) specified that the texts and preface should contain nothing scandalous or contrary to imperial constitution. ⁵⁶ The privileges granted in 1603 and 1616 to the Hamburg publisher s Philipp de Ohr and Georg Ludwig Frobenius for the music of Hieronymus Praetorius went further: presumably because Praetorius was a Protestant, the 1603 privilege instructed ‘that the songs should contain nothing in the preface or in the texts that is scandalous or opposed to Roman Catholic orthodoxy, or to the imperial constitution’. ⁵⁷ A similar wording is found in Frobenius’s 1616 privilege. Praetorius’s published collections contained Latin liturgical texts that would not offend the censor; indeed, several of these collections were subsequently reprinted in the strongly Catholic territory of Antwerp. ⁵⁸ By contrast, imperial privileges written in German for such musicians as Schütz or Schop made no stipulation about the texts. Censorship attempts by the imperial chancery thus seem to have been sporadic, and may have stemmed from the heightened confessional sensitivities in the decades around 1600.

In Saxony the upper consistory used privileges to uphold the system of censorship that had developed since the 1570s. A 1594 edict commanded that books should be approved prior to publication by the theological faculties in Wittenberg and Leipzig. To assist this censorship process, it instructed that books should be published only in these two university cities or in Dresden, where publications could be supervised by the court preachers; a limited exception was made for the book trade in Freiberg. ⁵⁹ Indeed, several privileges – including those for Schein (1617 and 1628), Schultz (1622) and Hammerschmidt (1662) – instructed the composers to submit the texts of their works to the Leipzig theological faculty for approval before printing. ⁶⁰ In his 1617 application, Schein volunteered to send a manuscript of each future work to the Elector for approval (Appendix 3); nonetheless, a consistory member annotated the letter, saying that the privilege was granted on condition that the theological faculty censored the texts. ⁶¹ Schütz’s 1618 and 1627 privileges make no mention of censorship, but it is implied in his 1636 Saxon privilege, which states that his works are subject ‘to the usual advance censor’. ⁶² Further research is necessary to show how rigorously music was censored prior to publication. The Saxon system of censorship was shaped by the efforts of clergy and state in the 1570s to suppress Calvinism and promote Lutheran orthodoxy. ⁶³ Perhaps the censors treated polyphony with a light touch, because something so musically elaborate would inherently have had connotations of Lutheran orthodoxy.

A final way in which rulers asserted their power via the privilege system was in requiring holders of privileges to deposit, at their own expense, copies of the books thereby protected. Imperial privileges usually required the holder to submit between three and seven copies to the chancery: Schütz’s 1637 privilege stated he should submit four copies of each book issued under its protection. ⁶⁴ Saxon privileges were more onerous, typically demanding eighteen copies from 1612 onwards despite the protests of bookdealers. ⁶⁵ Schein’s 1617 privilege stipulated he supply eighteen copies of the first work issued under the privilege, and then nine copies of subsequent titles; Schütz’s 1618 privilege required twelve copies of the initial publication and six copies of subsequent books. ⁶⁶ In his 1636 petition, Schütz tried to reduce this obligation, asking to submit just six copies of the Kleine geistliche Concerte if he published it himself, but twelve copies if a bookseller were the publisher. ⁶⁷ The upper consistory ignored his request, instead specifying in the privilege that he should submit eighteen copies of every publication. ⁶⁸ Although Schütz was evidently irked by the requirement for deposit copies, lesser-known musicians may have welcomed it as a way to draw their works to the attention of the Elector. If authors obeyed the stipulations on deposit copies, the Elector would have accrued countless books whose current location is unknown. One copy may have been placed in the electoral library, and another in Leipzig’s university library, ⁶⁹ but there would still have been a substantial quantity for the Elector to use as gifts or even re-sell. Perhaps the demand for so many deposit copies was primarily symbolic, an ostentatious show of the Elector’s power over the applicant.

Many aspects of the application process for privileges can be read as ritualistic displays of princely power. Applicants had to abase themselves before the ruler as a quasi-protector, while submitting to the scrutiny involved in censorship. The surviving documents suggest that the process to gain a Saxon privilege was more elaborate than that for an imperial privilege. Petitions for Saxon privileges were typically longer and used more supplicatory language than those for imperial privileges; the fair copies of Saxon privileges (Figure 1 above) had a splendour rarely found in imperial documents. In the pomp of these documents and the demand for so many deposit copies, the Elector sought to outdo the Emperor in a competitive display of power and status. Musicians or booksellers seeking to protect their publications thus had to participate in this symbolic performance of a ruler’s power.

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR PRIVILEGES

Despite the ritualistic nature of the process to obtain a privilege, the applications by composers reveal underlying ideas about musical authorship in the period. Composers claimed protection for their published works within a framework of loyalty to princely authority and to the wider community. The notion of Gemeinnutz (common good) was a prevalent ideology until the end of the seventeenth century, indicating how individuals should regulate their behaviour in the interest of the community. Gemeinnutz was opposed to Eigennutz (self-interest), where an individual pursued his or her interests to the disadvantage (Schaden, Nachteil) of others. ⁷⁰ The ethic of Gemeinnutz was strengthened in Protestant lands by Luther’s doctrine that believers should share their God-given talents for the benefit of their neighbours. Because of such beliefs, a composer’s work was widely understood as common property (gemein), to be freely shared. Only princes could make an exception to this presumption of common property, via the granting of a privilege. ⁷¹ The following section shows how privilege applications reconciled notions of the common good with recognition of the labour of composers and publishers.

The earliest printing privileges argued that these temporary interruptions of common law, guaranteeing the publisher or author a return on their publications, would nonetheless be for the public benefit. ⁷² The first known privilege granted to a musician, the 1511 imperial privilege to Arnold Schlick, explained that his treatise on organ-building ‘will reduce the high cost of organ-building caused from time to time by uncertain standards, by making this knowledge generally available to all in one book’. ⁷³ To grant Schlick a ten-year privilege for his book was accordingly ‘for the advancement of the common good’. ⁷⁴ Another early imperial privilege, granted by Charles V in 1545 to the publisher Hans Ott for Heinrich Isaac’s Choralis Constantinus, opens with a typical preamble. It praises ‘those who strive to aid public studies at their own expense, labour and industry, and take it upon themselves that every book by good authors . . . should be printed and published in the most accurate editions possible for distribution to the public’. Ott’s publication of the Choralis Constantinus is described as an ‘act of public beneficence’, for which he deserved to be protected from pirate publishers ‘who unjustly abuse the labour and industry of others for their own gain’. ⁷⁵

In the decades around 1600, applicants for privileges still invoked the notion of the common good. Calvisius’s 1594 application for a Saxon privilege for his Hymni sacri latini et germanici mentioned the hindrance caused by erroneous scribal copies, thereby implying the public benefit of having these hymns available in print. ⁷⁶ In his 1611 application for a renewed Saxon privilege, Calvisius explained: ‘With this your Electoral Grace will promote the prosperous state of the Christian church and the profit of the studious youth . . . and . . . will increase my diligence to do other things that I hope will serve the common good’ (Appendix 1). As late as 1662 Hammerschmidt explained that his Kirchen- und Tafel Music was intended to ‘seek not mine, but God’s honour and the profit of the Holy Church’ (Appendix 6). Through such statements, composers claimed protection while avoiding accusations of self-interest.

Other applicants for printing privileges spoke of their desire to protect themselves from the reputational or financial damage caused by unauthorised editions. Typically they castigated the makers of such illicit editions as motivated by greed (Geitz) or self-interest (Eigennutz), and as seeking to cause disadvantage (Schaden, Nachteil) to the author. Several composers claimed in their privilege applications that their reputation would be damaged by misprints in unauthorised editions. In his 1617 petition for a Saxon privilege, Schein warned that ‘many times, carefully disseminated things among others are liable to be reprinted by others with mistakes, not without special prejudice and disadvantage to the author’ (Appendix 3). When applying for an imperial privilege, Lassus explained why composers should supervise their publications: ‘Particular care must be taken lest books of music appear corrupted or poorly corrected, for whereas with ordinary books it may be possible for anyone to correct the mistakes, it is not easy for anybody to succeed in acting as corrector for misprinted songs.’ ⁷⁷ He went on to declare: ‘For the first edition [the printers] are following my will closely, but afterwards where my works are reissued, either they follow their own taste or they abandon the care they previously showed, so I can barely recognise my own work.’ ⁷⁸ James Haar regards Lassus’s comment as an example of ‘the rhetorical vividness for which his music was celebrated’, ⁷⁹ yet his fears were arguably justified. As shown below, unauthorised editions often contained misprints. Errors in partbook editions might not be spotted until the music was performed, and then it might be unclear whether the resulting harmonic clashes were caused by misprints or by the composer’s incompetence.

Composers also argued that a privilege would protect them financially from unauthorised editions. Such concern was expressed mainly by composers who acted as their own publisher and wished to recoup the capital they had invested in a run of copies. ⁸⁰ Many of the privilege holders listed in Tables 1 and 3 were self-publishers. In 1617 Schein sought his first Saxon privilege as he embarked on the publication of his own music, explaining that he had resolved to avoid working with commercial booksellers on account of their ‘unreasonable’ and ‘self-interested’ behaviour (Appendix 3). The following year Schütz explained in detail the financial risk borne by self-publishers, in his application for a privilege for his Psalmen Davids (1619). As a novice to the publishing business, Schütz fretted that ‘on completion of the opus, experienced booksellers and printers might immediately undertake to publish, reprint and sell it; consequently my copies might remain unsold and cause me significant and considerable harm’. ⁸¹ A privilege, he explained, would make him ‘better able to recoup the effort and considerable expense’. ⁸² Although Schütz may have received financial support from the Elector of Saxony (the dedicatee), publication of the Psalmen Davids was undoubtedly a substantial investment: each complete copy comprised thirteen partbooks with a total of approximately 850 pages, and a print run of at least several hundred copies is plausible. ⁸³

Vivid detail on why self-publishers needed the protection of privileges was offered by Hammerschmidt in his 1662 application for a Saxon privilege for his Kirchen- und Tafel Music: ‘There might be selfish people who . . . would reprint my work and sell it, through which not only my great labour would be turned to water, but also at the worst I would be ruined.’ He reinforced his plea by claiming that his expenses exceeded 600 florins ‘and I must therefore myself go back and forth into debt’ (Appendix 6). The Kirchen- und Tafel Music is another large publication, comprising nine partbooks with a total of 680 printed pages; a sum of 600 florins would be equivalent to the retail cost of approximately 600 partbook editions, and implies a print run somewhere between that number and one thousand copies. ⁸⁴ Hammerschmidt’s concern about unauthorised editions preventing him recouping his costs was a legitimate one: all his other works were published by commercial booksellers and often appeared in several editions, indicating a strong demand for his music.

The link between self-publishing and privileges suggests that musicians sought protection for their publications as business ventures, rather than from a nascent sense of intellectual property. Pohlmann, by contrast, interpreted a limited selection of privilege applications as early examples of authors asserting their economic rights to profit from their intellectual property. Examining a 1598 application for a Saxon privilege by the Thuringian composer Johann Steuerlein, Pohlmann asserted: ‘Here the relevant consideration is that the author by rights must reap the economic fruits of his intellectual work, and should not thereby be exposed to any injury or loss of rights.’ ⁸⁵ Yet Steuerlein was concerned to recoup the costs of printing, and showed no sense that his compositions were the products of his intellect. Near the start of his petition he reported (with reference to his previous publications): ‘I have had to pay a fee to the printer, generally 1 thaler for each sheet, as is usual.’ ⁸⁶ (Interestingly, Steuerlein’s previous works do not name him as publisher, merely indicating the name of the printer; ⁸⁷ his petition suggests that composers had to contribute to the costs of typesetting and printing even when not named as publisher on the title page). ⁸⁸ Steuerlein continued in his petition to the Elector: ‘With your princely reputation and authority . . . and by means of a privilege transmitted from your princely grace to me . . . I would humbly like to taste the profit from my musical work, and thereby remain unscathed by the printer’s fees.’ ⁸⁹ ‘Musical work’ could refer to either his published opus or the labour he invested in preparing this publication; either way, he sought protection specifically with regard to publication, not as recompense for the creative act.

Pohlmann made a similarly anachronistic interpretation of Melchior Vulpius’s 1601 privilege application as articulating ‘the imminent legal awareness of the human creator’. ⁹⁰ He focused on Vulpius’s statement that ‘my work is not for my private hoarding, and I am hoping through it to earn a modest crust of bread for me and my family’. ⁹¹ But here again, Vulpius was concerned specifically about the costs of printing: ‘As everyone knows, my income cannot stretch in the slightest to the printing of a publication.’ ⁹² Whether because of modesty or a deep-seated view that true creativity belonged to God, composers never mentioned their intellectual abilities as justifications for their privileges.

Although privileges are often associated with composers who published their own music, some musicians obtained privileges for books issued by commercial firms. This was the case with Calvisius, who in 1594 and 1611 applied for Saxon privileges for hymnals he had edited. In his 1594 application he argued that a privilege ‘would secure gratification [ergetzung] for my expended labour’. ⁹³ The term Ergötzung was used in publishing contracts to refer to the author receiving either a lump-sum payment in exchange for the copy-text, or a set of free copies. ⁹⁴ Calvisius clarified his meaning in his 1611 application for a renewed Saxon privilege (Appendix 1). Here he claimed he had not received Ergötzung for the third edition of his hymnal Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum, which was published in 1605 by Jakob Apel, after the expiry of his earlier privilege. He noted that all the copies had been sold by the publisher, perhaps implying he had expected to be rewarded with gratis copies. ⁹⁵ Echoing his 1594 application, he claimed that renewal of his privilege for the fourth edition of his hymnal ‘will secure me gratification for my expended labour’ (Appendix 1). For books such as hymnals with strong commercial potential, a privilege may have helped a musician negotiate a material reward from the publisher.

Yet this financial recognition was earned neither by intellectual effort nor by an act of creation. In Calvisius’s applications for privileges, the term Arbeit referred to his labour as an editor and arranger: indeed, the title page of his Harmonia cantionum ecclesiasticarum described his role as setting the tunes ‘in four voices in contrapuntal style correctly’ and bringing them together ‘in good order’. ⁹⁶ That arrangements could be protected by a privilege is further confirmed by the 1624 imperial privilege obtained by the Würzburg publisher Johann Volmar, for the figured-bass part made by the organist Caspar Vincentius for Lassus’s Magnum opus musicum (1604). Vincentius was not the author of the 516 motets contained in the Magnum opus musicum. But he must have invested considerable labour in making the figured-bass part, a task for which he would have had to intabulate or score up all of the 516 motets in order to discern their harmonies.

The applications for privileges show that, contrary to Pohlmann’s teleological interpretations, these legal instruments were not recognitions of authorship in terms of creative or intellectual work. Rather, privileges could be granted to publishers, editors, arrangers and composers alike. The main justifications for privileges were whether the publication served the common good, and whether the applicant had invested time or money in the volume. Self-publishers often applied for privileges to protect their works; and although their petitions cannot always be taken at face value, they offer tantalising glimpses of the transactions and costs involved in printing music.

PRIVILEGES FOR POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

A significant number of imperial and Saxon privileges were for posthumous publications of music. The family of a deceased composer sometimes sought to publish his works, either as a memorial to his achievements or as a source of income. Sheet music was often one of the most valuable items in a musician’s estate, and income from its sale could provide for the widow or other family members. (Indeed by the late seventeenth century it had become the norm for the widows of cantors to sell their deceased husband’s music manuscripts to the town council that employed him). ⁹⁷ Because privilege applications were concerned with questions of ownership, they often indicate who initiated posthumous publications. Among the privileges analysed in the following section, those for posthumous works by Schein and Adam Krieger are of particular interest, because they reveal the role of female relations in arranging the publication of a deceased composer’s music.

Privileges for posthumous publications of music show the range of individuals responsible for such projects. Given the importance of patrilineal inheritance, it might be expected that the sons of composers often supervised posthumous editions. Thus in 1628 an imperial privilege was granted to Johann Christoph Roberti, organist and musician in the Black Forest town of Hüfingen, for eight books of sacred music prepared by his father Heinrich for publication, as well as three books of his own compositions. ⁹⁸ In other cases, however, the privilege holder had a more distant connection with the deceased. Abraham Ratz’s 1594 Saxon privilege covered, among other items, music by the late Paul Coler, for whose children Ratz was guardian. ⁹⁹ The imperial privilege of 1600 for the posthumous works of the Silesian musician Johann Knöfel was awarded to Matthias Herr, a messenger for the Silesian chamber (the administrative organ through which the Emperor imposed Habsburg rule on Silesia). ¹⁰⁰ The privilege stated that Herr intended to have a selection of Knöfel’s Latin and German works printed by Paul Kauffmann in Nuremberg. Perhaps the acquisition of a privilege was delegated to Herr in his role as a go-between between the Emperor and the Silesian lands that were Knöfel’s home.

Newly discovered archival records for Saxon privileges show the negotiations involved in the posthumous publication of Schein’s music. During his lifetime Schein acted as his own publisher for nine collections of his music: two volumes of sacred concertos (Opella nova, 1618, 1626); madrigals with spiritual texts (Israelis Brünlein, 1623) and secular texts (Diletti pastorali, 1624); three volumes of secular villanellas (Musica boscareccia, 1621, 1626, 1628); a book of student songs (Studenten-Schmauß, 1626); and a hymnal (Cantional, 1627). Several of these books appeared in repeat editions during his lifetime. In his 1628 petition to renew his Saxon privilege, Schein outlined his intention to publish a large book of sacred music (with concertos for one to twelve voices), and also described the difficulties he met as a self-publisher (Appendix 4). Corroborating a complaint he made in Opella nova Ander Theil (1626), ¹⁰¹ he grumbled that his business was undermined by booksellers who refused to stock his books or even acknowledge their existence. The bookdealers may have been reluctant to deal with Schein because he was not a guild member or because he could not participate in the exchange trade (Tauschhandel) that was the basis of wholesale transactions. Schein’s complaints about his difficulties selling his work without access to a bookshop may explain why his widow did not continue his business after his death.

On Schein’s death in 1630, his widow sold his considerable stock of publications to the Leipzig bookdealer Jakob Schuster, along with the copperplates for the engraved title pages (Appendix 5). Already in 1634 Schuster issued a new edition of Schein’s drinking songs, the Studenten-Schmauß (see Table 5). In 1641 Schuster gained an eight-year Saxon privilege for new editions of Schein’s works. In his application (Appendix 5), he explained that the copies he had bought from the composer’s widow were now all sold, and he wished to meet the ongoing demand for Schein’s music by publishing new editions. To justify the privilege being granted to him rather than the family, he noted that the composer’s privilege had expired on 17 November 1638, and that he had bought the opera musica from Schein’s heirs.

Table 5 Posthumous editions of Schein’s music published by Jakob Schuster, ordered chronologically

As Table 5 shows, during the duration of Schuster’s 1641 privilege he issued new editions of Studenten-Schmauß, the Cantional, and all three parts of Musica boscareccia. The new edition of the Cantional retained the octavo format of the 1627 edition, despite Schuster stating in his privilege application that he wished also to issue it in duodecimo and octodecimo. It was enlarged with twenty-seven further sacred songs, mostly five-part lieder written by Schein and printed in pamphlets for funerals in the late 1620s; there are also three funerary compositions by Tobias Michael, Schein’s successor as Thomaskantor. Previous scholars have suggested that Michael prepared this revised edition of the Cantional. ¹⁰² But Schuster’s application for his privilege should prompt consideration of the role of Schein’s widow, who presumably supplied him with the copies of the pamphlets containing the extra lieder.

In 1649 Schuster gained an eight-year renewal of his Saxon privilege for Schein’s works. In his petition he explained he still held many copies of his earlier editions and he wished to protect these against unauthorised reprints; ¹⁰³ seeking continuity of protection, he applied for the new privilege three weeks before the old one expired. Under the aegis of his 1649 privilege, he issued not only another edition of Studenten-Schmauß, but also new editions of the five-voice madrigals Diletti pastorali and Israelis Brünlein (Table 5). Possibly these polyphonic collections were now in demand as churches and choirs restocked their libraries after the Thirty Years War. He still used the title-page copperplates he had purchased from Schein’s widow, as shown by the engraving on the 1650 tenor partbook of Studenten-Schmauß, with Schein’s distinctive ‘IHS’ motto. ¹⁰⁴ Schuster’s business ceased in 1653, ¹⁰⁵ but his activities up to this date indicate the ongoing demand for Schein’s music. As in Italy, it appears that some polyphonic genres (particularly secular song) were still marketable several decades after their initial publication. ¹⁰⁶

A final example of posthumous publication concerns the Dresden musician Adam Krieger, and again shows the role of female relations in publishing the works of deceased composers. Krieger was best known for his strophic songs, which were first published during his lifetime in the 1657 edition of Arien issued by the Leipzig bookseller Martin Maier. ¹⁰⁷ The Dresden archives indicate that Maier held a ten-year privilege for the Arien, granted on 23 November 1656. ¹⁰⁸

On 30 June 1666 Krieger died at the age of 30. In 1667 and 1676 posthumous editions of his Arien appeared, augmented with extra songs and instrumental ritornelli for five-part ensemble. Musicologists have usually attributed the editorship of these posthumous publications to the Dresden court poet and librarian David Schirmer, whose commendatory verse appears in both editions. ¹⁰⁹ The archives show, however, that the 1667 edition was protected by a ten-year Saxon privilege granted that year to Krieger’s mother Anna for the ‘posthumous musical things of her deceased son’. ¹¹⁰ The privilege is also advertised on the title page of the 1667 edition, with the words: ‘So nach seinem Seel. Tode erst zusammen gebracht/ und zum Druck befördert worden/ Mit Churf. Durchl. zu Sachsen &c. Special-Privilegio, in 10. Jahren nicht nachzudrucken.’ The same wording appears on the 1676 edition (issued by the Dresden bookdealer Martin Gabriel Hübner), indicating it too was protected by Anna Krieger’s privilege. In 1678, shortly after the expiry of her privilege, Hübner himself obtained a privilege for Krieger’s ‘Musicalien in fol.’ ¹¹¹ Possibly Anna Krieger had now died and Hübner wanted to ensure ongoing protection for his edition.

The archives contain only the draft of Anna Krieger’s privilege; there survives no application letter, which might have illuminated her motives or the negotiations involved in the publication of these posthumous editions. Nonetheless the privilege suggests that following Krieger’s death, his music became the property of his mother. Rather than selling it outright to a publisher (as did Schein’s widow), she instead sought to control the publication and perhaps gain income from it via her Saxon privilege. Anna Krieger may have been involved in the editing and collation of the posthumous editions, perhaps commissioning the additions to the 1667 edition and even the unsigned preface for this book.

Under any circumstances, the printing of a music book was a collaborative venture, involving multiple negotiations between composer, publisher, printer and bookseller. The role of women in these collaborations was usually hidden, owing to the convention that their names should not appear in print: many seventeenth-century books bear the imprint of the heirs (Erben) of a printer, without explaining that such firms were often run by the printer’s widow or unmarried daughter. The privileges for posthumous publications reveal a further way in which women might participate in the music trade, by negotiating for the publication of compositions by deceased family members.

PRIVILEGES VERSUS PIRATES

The question remains whether privileges offered effective protection against unauthorised editions. Because polyphonic music was an elite item for a relatively small market, there are only a few documented examples of collections with sufficient commercial appeal to attract unauthorised editions. The following section examines how Schütz, Schein and Albert sought to use their privileges against pirate publishers.

Because of its complexity and technical demands on performers, Schütz’s published music had limited commercial appeal. None of his authorised publications was sufficiently popular to appear in a second edition during his lifetime, apart from the simple four-voice hymns in his Becker Psalter (1628) that were subsequently published in editions of 1640 and 1661 sponsored by central German courts. ¹¹² Nonetheless Schütz’s applications for privileges repeatedly refer to the threat of unauthorised reprints. In his 1642 request for the renewal of his imperial privilege, he declared: ‘I stand in fear that someone might be found who would reprint my musical works for his own gain but at a great loss and disadvantage to me.’ ¹¹³ Six years earlier, when petitioning for a renewed Saxon privilege, Schütz claimed that booksellers refused to publish his music because of ‘various difficulties, especially the troublesome and disadvantageous reprinting’. ¹¹⁴ In the mid-1630s, however, an equally plausible reason would have been the shortage of paper and financial difficulties caused by the Thirty Years War. ¹¹⁵

The only known examples of unauthorised publications of Schütz’s music are in a two-volume anthology, the Geistliche wolklingende Concerte assembled by Nordhausen music-lovers and printed in Goslar in 1637–8. These volumes include Schütz’s concerto ‘Schaffe in mir Gott’ for two voices and continuo (SWV 291) and a set of duos from the Historia der Auferstehung (SWV 50). ¹¹⁶ They also contain two abridged versions of Schütz’s polychoral psalms: ‘Lobe den Herren’ (SWV 39) in an arrangement for two voices and continuo, and ‘Alleluja! Lobet den Herren’ (SWV 38) reduced to three voices plus continuo, and now attributed to Andreas Oehme. ¹¹⁷ Although the making of anthologies was an accepted practice in the book trade, the anonymous editors of the Geistliche wolklingende Concerte feared their appropriations might arouse the composers’ ire. As they wrote in the dedication of the 1637 volume: ‘We have presumed to print and publish [these concertos] without incurring the displeasure of the authors themselves, to whose distinguished works we intend no harm.’ ¹¹⁸

Schütz would have regarded the reprinting of ‘Schaffe in mir Gott’ as a breach of his Saxon privilege, given that it was taken from the first book of his Kleine geistliche Concerte, which had been published two years earlier under a ten-year Saxon privilege. He may also have considered the few-voiced arrangements of his polychoral psalms as detrimental to his reputation. However, his Saxon privilege would not necessarily have been enforceable against the Nordhausen anthologies, which claim on their title pages to be likewise covered by a Saxon privilege (possibly a false claim, as no corroboratory evidence survives in the archives). Instead Schütz sought an imperial privilege, possibly in direct response to the Nordhausen volumes. ¹¹⁹ (The chronology of the relevant documents is not straightforward: the earliest Nordhausen volume has a dedication dated 25 March 1637, whereas Schütz’s imperial privilege is dated 3 April 1637. ¹²⁰ Schütz therefore would have required advance warning of the Nordhausen volumes to have gained an imperial privilege so soon after their publication.) Schütz’s imperial privilege invoked a higher authority than the purported Saxon privilege protecting the Nordhausen anthologies. But his imperial privilege may have had little more than symbolic power, for it was likely to be upheld only by the imperial book commission at the Frankfurt book fair.

Privileges again seem to have had limited effectiveness for Schein against unauthorised editions. Schein’s music had stronger commercial appeal than Schütz’s, as shown by the posthumous publication of his works discussed above. Particularly popular were Schein’s secular villanellas in the three volumes of Musica boscareccia, which were reprinted in 1628 by Paul Ledertz in Strasbourg. Ledertz’s editions reproduced closely the composer’s authorised versions, except that they omit the engraved title pages and have no reference to a privilege. ¹²¹ Ledertz probably believed he was acting legitimately, given that Schein’s first Saxon privilege had expired the previous year. Moreover, it was accepted practice in the book trade to reprint a work to serve a different geographical market from the original publisher. But Schein complained bitterly about Ledertz’s editions in his 1628 application to renew his Saxon privilege, describing them as causing him ‘insuperable harm’ (Appendix 4). Undoubtedly Schein was irked by the appearance of Ledertz’s editions in the autumn 1628 book fair at Leipzig, where they were in direct competition with his own stock. ¹²² But because he had let his 1617 Saxon privilege expire, Schein could not petition the Leipzig council to confiscate the copies of Ledertz’s editions at the fair. Nor did his renewed Saxon privilege prevent Ledertz’s heirs printing further unauthorised editions in 1632 of Musica boscareccia after Schein’s death, and these copies were again advertised for sale at the Leipzig fair. ¹²³ An imperial privilege might have offered better protection, given that Strasbourg was under imperial control; but Schein’s struggle against Ledertz shows the difficulty of enforcing a privilege across the fragmented jurisdictions of German-speaking lands.

The best-documented example of a mid-seventeenth-century musician clashing with pirate publishers is provided by the Königsberg organist Heinrich Albert. Albert’s Arien (which he published himself between 1638 and 1650) comprise eight volumes of strophic songs, setting verse by poets such as Simon Dach and Robert Roberthin (who met in Albert’s garden in an informal society dubbed the Kürbs-Hütte). ¹²⁴ The Arien were highly popular for several reasons. They were the first German song collections to be printed in score format, on elegant folio pages with eye-catching engravings on the title pages. The songs included an attractive mix of sacred and secular topics, plus some homage compositions written for dignitaries visiting Königsberg. The musical settings could be realised in a variety of ways, ranging from a singer self-accompanying on the keyboard, to a group of singers alternating with instrumental ritornelli. With such versatility, the Arien appealed to many burghers in the cities along the Baltic coast. Most of the eight volumes received second or third editions within a few years of their first publication, and the folio format was imitated by other songbooks such as Johann Weichmann’s three-volume Sorgen-Lägerin (1648).

In June 1642 Albert obtained a privilege from the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia: ‘We Friedrich Wilhelm . . . command graciously and earnestly the printers and booksellers in all our electoral and inherited lands, that they should not print the Arien in any format, neither in whole nor in part, neither melodies nor texts within ten years, nor possess or sell [unauthorised] copies printed by others.’ ¹²⁵ Subsequently the privilege was ratified by Władysław IV Vasa of Poland, who held sovereignty over Prussia. ¹²⁶ The wording of the privilege overlooked the collaborative nature of the Arien, specifically the contribution of the poets such as Dach. By giving Albert the exclusive right to control the publication of the texts and tunes, the privilege recognised primarily his role in assembling and publishing the Arien, rather than his role as a composer.

In 1645 the first unauthorised edition appeared: the Poetisches Lust-Gärtlein, a duodecimo book containing the texts of fifty-seven secular songs from books 1 to 5 of the Arien. ¹²⁷ Like most illicit editions, the Lust-Gärtlein bears no place of publication and no publisher’s name; according to a catalogue from the Leipzig book fair, however, the publisher was Andreas Hünefeld in Danzig, ¹²⁸ The book epitomised the spirit of appropriation and popularisation common in the transmission of secular song: it made the lyrics available in a pocket-sized format, suitable for those who could not read music or could not afford Albert’s folio books. The Lust-Gärtlein gives correct attributions for the authors of almost all of the poems, and omits the melodies that were Albert’s authorial contribution to the Arien. Yet Albert considered it to be ‘an unjust work’ ¹²⁹ and a breach of his 1642 privilege that protected the texts of the Arien. Because Danzig was under Polish jurisdiction, it contravened the version of the privilege confirmed by the Polish king.

More serious for Albert were three pirated editions of 1648 that mimicked the folio format of his authorised editions, in a deliberate attempt to deceive buyers. These fake editions comprised the Poetisch-Musicalisches Lustwäldlein, containing the words and music of 144 songs from Albert’s books 1 to 6; ¹³⁰ an unauthorised edition of the Siebender Theil der Arien; ¹³¹ and a pirated version of the Musicalische Kürbs-Hütte (a 1645 set of three-part compositions commemmorating the poetic circle that met in Albert’s garden). ¹³² To a casual buyer and even to some modern bibliographers, these editions might look genuine. ¹³³ They claim on their title pages to be printed in Königsberg and they contain forewords bearing Albert’s name; an extant copy of the Poetisch-Musicalisches Lustwäldlein even has an engraved frontispiece depicting Mount Parnassus, reminiscent of the engraved title pages on Albert’s authorised editions. ¹³⁴ Yet these editions give no information about the publisher, and in the spring 1648 book-fair catalogue the Lustwäldlein was ascribed to the fictitious bookseller ‘Christian Castuben’ of Christiana (Oslo). ¹³⁵ Furthermore they were inaccurately printed, with no vertical alignment of the barlines in the score. Evidently the pirate typesetter had followed the notational symbols in Albert’s editions by rote, unaware that a score needs to be read vertically as well as horizontally.

Albert complained bitterly about the pirated editions, even issuing a bifolium pamphlet attacking the Lustwäldlein. ¹³⁶ Confirming the fears of Lassus and Schein about misprints in unauthorised editions (see above), he argued that the inaccuracies of these pirated editions would damage his reputation. Regarding the 1645 Lustgärtlein, he claimed that ‘not a single song-text, whether reprinted in Danzig or here in small format, can be read without finding a mistake, not to mention that the same people have altered entire words and hence suppressed the correct meaning of each song’. ¹³⁷ Given the vagaries of early modern orthography, this was perhaps an exaggerated grievance; but more pertinent were his complaints about the errors in the 1648 editions. Besides listing misprints in specific songs, he bemoaned the lack of vertical alignment in the score: ‘As is apparent already from the first song, this [compositor] must be an ignoramus, for he does not set a single bar correctly, as it should stand in a score. The evil man continues in this inept way until the end of all the songs.’ ¹³⁸ Afraid that these botched editions would expose him to the ‘scolding and mockery of learned musicians’, ¹³⁹ Albert declared: ‘I protest solemnly, that I did not set the music in such confusion.’ ¹⁴⁰

Equally irksome for Albert was the economic damage caused by the pirate publishers. Here he echoed Luther’s denunciation of the makers of unauthorised editions: ‘Seeking their own profit, they do not care for the accuracy of what they print . . . they just print it quickly, to make money.’ ¹⁴¹ Albert similarly claimed that booksellers and printers were motivated by greed, ‘which in disregard of their conscience, against the prohibition of high princes, yes even against our God, they have no scruple in doing disadvantage to their neighbour’. ¹⁴² Elaborating these comments in his 1648 Verwarnung, he lambasted ‘these greedy printers and booksellers who take away the reward for my musical work’. ¹⁴³ Here again, ‘work’ (Arbeit) could denote the published product or the process of composing and compiling it.

Albert then articulated his notion of musical property, explaining that ‘this my work, so to speak (with Nathan) is my own little sheep, which can give me milk and wool, [but] some greedy people who have many sheep and cattle want to take it away from me’. ¹⁴⁴ Here he invoked the parable told by Nathan (2 Samuel 12: 1–13), in which the rich man stole the poor man’s only sheep. In the Old Testament, Nathan told this story to rebuke King David for murdering Uriah the Hittite and committing adultery with his wife Bathsheba. As adapted by Albert, the rich men are the unscrupulous booksellers who steal the composer’s few publications. The pastoral analogy does not refer to Albert’s authorial role, making no mention of mental or physical labour that might mark his metaphorical ‘sheep’ as his own. By comparing himself to a smallholder with livestock, Albert clarified his desire to subsist from his publications, while distancing himself from any connotations of commerce.

Albert’s privileges provided some legal protection against the pirated editions. In 1648 he reported that his Polish privilege was upheld by the city council of Danzig, which confiscated unauthorised copies of the Lust-Gärtlein and interrogated a possible suspect, a bookdealer’s servant from Rostock. ¹⁴⁵ The servant attested in a sworn testimony that he was unaware of the author’s privilege, and that he did not have more than eight unauthorised copies. He claimed these copies were acquired from a journeyman printer (a group often suspected of involvement in book piracy). ¹⁴⁶ If Albert’s report is true, it can be added to the list of known occasions when privileges were enforced against unauthorised publishers. ¹⁴⁷

In 1648 Albert also obtained a twelve-year imperial privilege for his Arien, ¹⁴⁸ but it is unclear whether or not this was upheld. Its jurisdiction did not include the Prussian and Polish lands that were the main markets for his music and the probable location of the printer of the 1648 pirated editions. Nor did it prevent the Breslau musician Ambrosius Profe issuing in 1657 a two-volume octavo edition of the songs from books 1 to 6 of the Arien, reduced to a two-voice texture of cantus and bass. ¹⁴⁹ Although Albert had died in 1651, the imperial privilege remained in force until 1660 and forbade anyone from reprinting the Arien ‘in larger or smaller formats’. ¹⁵⁰

In his preface, Profe sought to legitimise his edition by emphasising how it served the common good. All the folio copies had sold out, he noted, yet many people still wished to buy them, and there was nobody except Profe willing to print further copies. He also argued that his octavo edition was ‘better and more useful’ (besser und nützlicher) than the folio format of Albert’s songbooks, in which only the first verse of each song was provided as underlay, with the remaining strophes printed at the bottom of the page. Some musicians even copied out the songs with all the strophes underlaid, ‘but with much complaint and annoyance. To save you such effort and work, I have put the words of each strophe under the melody.’ ¹⁵¹ Through such arguments, Profe presented his edition as a legitimate enterprise that neither infringed the composer’s printing privileges nor disadvantaged Albert’s heirs.

Although the legal power of Albert’s privileges was limited, they had symbolic force, investing his editions with authority. Such a statement of authority is found on the 1650 engraved title page of the Achter Theil der Arien, where the three eagles symbolise the rulers who granted Albert his privileges (Figure 2). In the centre, the double-headed eagle represents the Holy Roman Emperor; on the left, the eagle symbolising the Polish crown is identifiable from the heraldic sheaf of the Vasa dynasty; and on the right, the eagle representing the Elector of Brandenburg is identifiable by the ‘FV’ initials of Friedrich Wilhelm (ruled 1640–88). Above the eagles, light radiates from the Hebrew letters YHWH, the divine authority from which these secular princes drew their power. Under the eagles’ wings are stylised scenes that represent the poetic world of the Arien: on the left, a funerary procession entering the city gates, and on the right, a convivial garden scene with musicians around a table and a lutenist and female singer. The theme of protection is reinforced by the nesting hen in the lower foreground, whose chicks are surrounded by the text ‘Sub his alis’ (‘under these wings’), an allusion to Psalm 90:4 and its promise of God’s shelter. ¹⁵² Just as the hen protects her chickens, so too do the princely eagles guard Albert’s sense of ownership over his Arien. The eye-catching iconography reassured purchasers that this edition was authoritative, and warned pirate publishers to stay away from Albert’s published work.

Figure 2 Engraved title page of Heinrich Albert, Achter Theil der Arien (Königsberg, 1650). British Library, G.61. By permission of the British Library Board

CONCLUSION

The archival evidence uncovered in this article shows that printing privileges, far from being the forerunners of the modern copyright system as Pohlmann claimed, were a way for publishers and authors to increase the value of their publications. For publishers (including composers such as Schein and Schütz who self-published), a privilege enhanced the financial worth of an edition, raising the likelihood of a return on their investment. Some privileges may indicate music with strong commercial value, such as the posthumous editions of secular songs by Schein and Krieger. Yet the privilege system also boosted the symbolic significance of printed books. Because privileges were time consuming and expensive to obtain, they advertised the effort that an author or publisher had invested in a book. Mention of a privilege on a title page implied that the book was an authoritative text, produced to a high standard and properly proofread.

The uses of privileges show the symbiotic relationship between commercial and symbolic value in early music publishing. From the early sixteenth century onwards, in the wider book trade there was a growing awareness that mechanical reproduction could diminish the aura of a text. ¹⁵³ In response, some printers or authors replicated the devices used to authenticate handwritten texts, such as seals and signatures. From 1524 Luther’s approved editions appeared with the ‘Luther rose’ – his coat-of-arms comprising a rose with a cross and his initials. As he explained: ‘This sign shall testify that such books as bear it have gone through my hands, for there is much illegal printing and corruption of books these days.’ ¹⁵⁴ Privileges similarly acted as authentication marks, giving the book an authoritative presence. The iconographical representation of Albert’s privileges on his Achter Theil der Arien (Figure 2 above) signalled that this book could be trusted, and thereby reassured potential purchasers that the higher price of the composer’s authorised publications was worth paying. ¹⁵⁵ Thus the symbolic power of a privilege could enhance the commercial value of a publication. The documents analysed in this article show not only the relationships between princely authority, composers and publishers; they also illuminate the interplay between commercial and symbolic factors in the music trade, and thereby clarify the motives behind music publishing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.