A Sketch of the History of Music-Printing, from the to the Nineteenth Century Author(s): Friedrich Chrysander Source: The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 18, No. 412 (Jun. 1, 1877), pp. 265-268 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3353554 Accessed: 18-06-2016 09:39 UTC

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for her. We further see, reasoning from the same THE WIUSICAL TIMES experience that even in the midst of the greatest embarrassments it was not found possible to arrive AND SINGING-CLASS CIRCULAR. at any other but that which had JUNE I, I877. been worked out in the course of centuries, going hand in hand with the development of musical forms. Consequently all the attempts to substitute a new A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF MUSIC- notation for the old, which have been especially fre- PRINTING, FROM THE FIFTEENTH TO quent in recent times, are idle experiments, and will never have any higher importance than that of private THE NINETEENTH CENTURY amusement. Musical notation is fixed and the BY FRIEDRICH CHRYSANDER. printer has to take it as it is, and to direct all his ingenuity to the one problem of overcoming the diffi* PRINTING with movable types was invented for the culties of its mechanical reproduction. purpose of noting down language, not music. But it The various attempts made with this aim, and the soon became evident that books with musical notes i results attained by them for the extension of the art, would form a profitable business to the printer. The produce a division of the history of music-printing Church was glad to have her great Missals and into various modes and periods. Even when several Antiphonaries printed; and she was rich and paid of the modes of printing music were practised simul- well. She was the first power of the age, so that taneously, still, taken in connection nith the develop- labour undertaken for her procured for the printer ment of the art, they are found to have arisen one after ads antages in the form of recommendations which he the other, and on different musical territories. This is could present in all quarters. the ground on which we are justified in speaking of However, to print music with the means supplied an actual History of music-printing in a far higher by Gutenberg's invention was a work of peculiar degree than we can in relation to book-printing. We difficulty. The music-writing, which had its origin must accordingly divide it into five periods. in Italy in the early centuries of our era, and has The FIRST PERIOD is the time of the origin of been further improved from the Middle Ages to the printing, and is Elled up by various experiments in present day, occupies a middle point between multiplying music by a mechanical process, chiefly ordinary writing and picture. In regard to its employing engraving on wooden blocks (block-pritxtixg, established signs for the various values of the time or xylography). The age comprising these attempts of the sounds it is writing- but in regard to its may be set down as the century from I460 to I560. visible presentation of the hezght of the sounds, and The SECOND PERIOD begins about I500 with the the combination of various voices, it is delineation. invention of movable types for music by Petrucci; its It is this union of writing and picture that makes our proper age is the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries music-writing so valuable that nothing else can but in its consequences it will last through all time. supplant it; but this is also what makes it so The THIRD PERIOD is that of . It runs particularly difficult to print with movable types. parallel with the second but belongs to a completely This difficulty consists in one single point the inter- distinct department of tie art. It begins in I509 and section of horizontal and vertical lines. A music- disappears in the seventeenth century, and is no writer employs straight lines in a horizontal position more likely ever again to come into use than the and inserts vertically on these the signs for notes. block-printing of the first period. Parallel lines by themselves can be printed easily and The FOURTH PERIOD, comprising music-engraving elegantly, and so can signs of notes by themselves- on copper plates, was developed out of the third but a combination of the t+ro, such as the hand of towards the end of the sixteenth century, and set aside the could produce with the utmost facility at the beginning of the eighteenth, through the in- presented difficulties with which the first inventors of vention of the fifth period, though maintained in use printing found themselves unable to contend. Several in some countries down to about the year I800. decades passed, consequently, before they ventured rhe FIFTH and last PERIOD begins early in the on this problem. eighteenth century, but is very slow in attaining per- Still, it is a very curious fact that no attempt was fection. In this period pewtet is employed instead of made to evade the existing difficulty. It would have copper, at Erst in mere imitation of the process of been a suitable occasion to inLrent a new system of copper-engraving, but soon with the introduction of music-writing, or to hunt up again one of the earlier punches (steel stamps), through which music-engraving modes of designating musical sounds. There was first attained that degree of practical and mechanical an ancient mode of writing music which seemed to perfection which secures to it a pre-eminence above offer itself as if ready-made for the purpose of the all other methods. For the development of music- printer; viz. by the use of letters of the alphabet. printing the invention of this last period is the most It had, moreover, in its favour an authority to which important of all. in musical matters every one generally bowed: the Thus, in the five different periods we make ac Greeks had used it, and in a very fully developed form, quaintance with five diderent processes. Of these, using upright letters for singing and inverted ones for only those of the second and the Efth periods possess instrumental music. Had it been possible to employ any permanent value for the art the three others this system for the music of the Western Church it has e an antiquarian interest only. +vould have been done then. But it vas not possible. FIRST PERIOD: XYLOGRAPHY. The newly acquired notation, which had grown up gradually, was as firmly fixed as the ediSce of the Block-Printing.-Listes ttinted and ?totes inserted by nesv music itself. We can infer from this that the hand . mischievous influence of Greek theories on the growth Pattern-Pri1xting (Patronendrxck). Ltnes and wntesis of Western music, of which so much complaint is printed with movable types in Church books made in modern histories of music, is really based on (Missals, Sc.). pure imagination, since Music herself understood The above headings indicate the two paths which sery well how to keep to the path which was the best were taken in this earliest period in printing music.

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The second was the more correct but the more as at the beginning of the fiLfteenth century. 'the obvious and the more important in this age was the progress from " Xylography " to " Typography 7 was first, printing from wooden blocks. This period may therefore made by music in perfect analogy to that therefore be simply designated by the term Xylography, made by language, only later. which is well known in Germany and France, and is The oldest book known with note printed from more convenient than its English equivalent Block- wooden blocks was produced at Augsburg by Hans printing. Froschauer in I473. It was, however, probably pre- To understand the works of this earliest stage of ceded by others. Froschauer printed Gregorian music-printing we must go back to the history of the notes. For these, however, blocks are only a very beginningof book-printing. In it also Xylography, miserable makeshift, because the words to the one-

or printing from large tablets of wood, was the com- voiced melodies take as much space as the notes mencement, or more properly the precursor. In and a better way of printing them was soon disco- most cases the text was accompanied by pictures; vered. But block-printing remained in that ge the and Indeed this very union of words and pictures only possible method for Figurative music; s.e. arti- encouraged the preparation of such tablets. And as Ecial counterpoint, or music in several parts. So all signs of human language were originally only for this purpose wood-engraving was employed for pictures of the objects designated, it may be said that several decades before Petrucci's invention offered a the art of printing, in starting from the pictures- perfect compensation for its abandonment s.e. from these engraved blocks in a certain manner Ugone de Rugeriis, of Bologna, published in I487 went back to the earliest signification of the letters. the first work that contains a piece of printed figu- There were Bilderschxvider (picture-cutters) as early rative music Niccolo Burzio (Burtius), a native of

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 09:39:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE MUSICAL TIMES. --JUNE I, I877. 267

Parma, Professor of Music, wrote a work on his art, employed to the exclusion of types. It would lead incited by the attacks which a Spaniard had directed us too far to give the musical reasons which led to against the unassailable Guido of Arezzo. This book this use of the Egurative notes. If the Lutherans had contains sixty-seven leaves in quarto, and commences, used in their hymn-books the Gregorian notes which "Nicola; Bxlstii, Parmensis musices professoris, ac existed in the Latin Missals, Antiphonaries, and juris pontificii studiosissimi, XtusiCes opXscXlb1X incipit: Psalters, they would from the first have employed cum defensione Guidonis Aretini," &c., and concludes movable types in printing the notes. This brings us with the remark that Ugone de Rugeriis finished to the second part of our history, which will treat printing it " ist Bowtoniaanno donsiali MCCCCLXXX VII of the question how the Chorczl or Gregorian Notes dVie ultima atrilis ? (on the last day of April I487)-''* came to be printed in this Erst period. Four stages Of the three tracts of which this small work con- must be distinguished. sists, the first contains three specimens of one-voice In the earliest printed Church-books which con- music: the old melody " Ut queant laxis," on flrre tained music the words were printed and then the lines, seven ascending hexachords on eleven lines; notes inserted by hand. Such a procedure was very twenty-one ascending tetrachords on elexen lines. natural, because the first printed books were sold not There are also some explanations of musical terms; as impressions but as manuscripts. all are printed on blocks. It was an advance when people began to print the The " Tractatus Secundus," treating of the rules of lines, in which the notes were afterwards inserted by the Cantazs cotxr¢ixti seb coxtrpuncti, contains on hand. The lirzes in these Missals, &c. are red? and page 76 a specimen of music in three parts for were printed simultaneously with the red initials Discantus, Tenor, and Contratenor, cut in a block words, and lines contained in the letterpress. of wood, of which an exact facsimile will be found Apart from other drawbacks to writing in the notes, on the preceding page. it was very inconvenient from the fact that writing- Burtius' third tract, dealing with the Ca?Xttls ink and paper which has to undergo the process of FigxrGltqxs, has on page go a similar example of notes of printing do not agree well together; and the irregu- diSerent value and of ligatures. larity of the written notes contrasted disagreeably As may be seen from our facsimile, the first with the mechanical regularity of the letterpress. attempt to multiply Egurative music by mechanical So they then made signs of notes in the form of types means was very crude and awkward. It was consi- or punches, covered them with printer's ink, and then derably improved in time? but never became fully pressed them one by one with the hand upon or satisfactory. For theoretical works, in which only a between the four red lines. This process was called few examples were required,which had to be inserted in German Patroxendrgck ( pattern-printing). On in the midst of letterpress, such woodblocks were avail- account of the clumsiness of the signs and the im- able, and even more convenient than the movable perfectness of the wh.ole process, it is difficult to types then in use. Blocks are therefore found to determine in particular cases when this pattern- have been employed in Franchinus Gaforius' Prarctica printing and when real mechanical printing was Msica (Milan, I496), and thence onwards till after employed. the middle of the sixteenth century. Another species of books with music was in use, From the pattern-printing there was only a single for which the printing from small wooden blocks step that led to printing with movable types. In came very opportunely. These were the hymn-books what year, at what place, and by what printer this of Luther and his community. The first of these step was taken cannot at present be demonstrated. appeared in the year I523, with the title Etlich Crist- At least it was before the end of the ISfteenth century lich lider Lobgesang xotd Psalg (Wittemberg, I523); and probably by various printers at different places, it was a very modest little tract of twelve leaves working independently of each other. We infer this containing eight hymns, to which five tunes are ap- from the fact that such specimens of printing are pended.t All successive hymn-books were similarly found coming from places far distant, and that th-e accompanied by notes cut in wood. At Wittemberg two kinds of choral notes, the Italian and the German (and other German towns also) a long time seems to which differ widely from each other, are both em- have elapsed before Petrucci's types were imitated - ployed in them. Besides, the printers moved from for even in Johann NValther7s ChorgesasgbEichlvi¢, one place to another and spread abroad every- svhich was published there in I524 in four part-books, where the seeds of their art. Thus Erhard Ratdolt all the music was cut in wood, and the skill required says in the Missal for the use of the diocese of Con- for this process was there developed into real neat- stance, which he printed at Augsburg in I504 and I505? ness and elegance. that he had first exercised his art at Venice (" Liber Yet woodblocks were rarely employed for extensive Missalis .... per Erhardum Ratdolt mira impri- pieces of music in several parts which were intended mendi arte qua nuper Venetiis: nunc Auguste Vin- for singing. In the few instances in which they are delicorum excellit nominatissimus "). found they must be regarded as a makeshift. This It cannot, however, be supposed that this printing is the case in a tract printed at Antwerp by Jan de of the choral notes was produced in imitation of the -Gheet in April I5I5, in honour of the Emperor Maxi- process which Petrucci discovered at Venice, of which milian, which contains several four-part songs by the we shall afterwards give some account. It may be otherwise unknown composer Benedictus de Opitiis assumed much more correctly that Petruccl received the four concurrent voices being printed on a single a stimulus to his invention from these very printed block of wood, and arranged so as to occupy the Missals and other choral books. Ratdolt had pre- whole of the two pages facing one another.t viously printed at Venice, consequently at the same In all the Lutheran hymn-books the figurative time as Petrucci; he did not imitate him, simply notes were employed, never the Gregorian. This was because he could not. The aim and the means of the immediate reason why wooden blocks came to be this sort of music were quite distinct, and the methed had been worked out step by step, as has been shown.

* In the British Museum and the Public Library of Hanover. The requirements were four red lines, which were t In the Royal Library of Berlin and the City Library of Hamburg. provided in types of the length of iom a third of an ; In the British Museum and the City Library of Hamburg. inch to an inch, attached to one another, and Italian

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or German choral notes. Impressions of this kind of magnitude such as can be appreciated only by a were in existence about ten years before Petrucci musician well experienced in the craft Young Balfe began. If Petrucci had never lived, the music of left Dublin, his native city, for LondonS a lad of the Missals, Antiphonaries, and other Church song- sixteen years of age, already a lnusician of much books would still have been printed exactly as we promise. With the kindness forwhich he was welI now have them- his method had not the slightest known, Tom Cooke, the director of the music at inflnence upon them. The little book published by Drury Lane Theatre, admitted his youthful country- John Merbecke in IS50, The booke of co1nwnon ttaier man into his excellent orchestra as a violinist; and ?oted t . . . IXriozted by Richard Grafto, is a very fitting occasionally aSorded him the opportunity to acquire example for English readers. Compared with earlier experience as a " Leader," when his own services- impressions of the same kind- e.g. the Spanish Missal, were required upon the stage as lyric actor. Balfe the printing of which was finished by Johannes Belon, was certainly born under a lucky star. In I825 he January 9, I504 Grafton's performance presents no had the good-fortune to attract the notice of an doubt an extremely miserable appearance. But the Italian nobleman, an amateur composer, by his musi- manner or school of printing, the technical method, cal talents and agreeable manners. He was invited was one and the same in both. to accompany him to Italy, free of expense, and This was the origin of printing with movable types, to become his guest at Romef in which city he for the limited domain of ecclesiastical one-part determined to go through a severe course of counter- choral song. We shall now see how a similar point under Federici. Subsequently at Milan he process was invented for the spread of music written continued his studies in composition, singing, arld artistically in several parts. lyric acting; at the same time that he was laying upE (To be conti1zed.) a valuable store of practical dramatic experiences, and gaining facility and fluency in operatic writing both for voices and instruments. ENGLISH OPERA Native Opera in England was still in the ascendant in BY CHARLES K. SALAMAN. I835 when Balfe returned to this country fully fledged (Conclzzded fronz tage 2I4.) and with expanded wings ready for immediate flight into the operatic regions. He composed for Arnold MICHAEL WILLIAM BALFE was, of modern times, his first English Opera, "The Siege of Rochelle.t the most prolific contributor to the operatic stage of It was rehearsed, but before it could be performed England. He possessed the rare gift of melody the enterprise came to an untimely end, and the composed with facility and rapidity, and his technical English Opera House was closed. Bunn, of Drury resources were ample. It concerned him little Lane Theatre, was at that moment in search of an whether or not his compositions were original, and English Opera to E11 an unexpected vacancy. Balfe's whether they were perfectly in accord with the text he Opera, in compiete readiness for representation, was was engaged in setting to music. Balfe's chief aim, oSered and accepted. In the autumn of I835 it was as it would appear by his works, was to catch the ear brought outX and its success was so marked that it of the public, and to become a popular composer. His kept the stage uninterruptedly for three months, ancl music, however hurriedly or carelessly written, ever the fame of its composer was at once assured. Balfe manifests the work of an accomplished master. An had hit the public taste, and was immediately recog- able musical critic, concluding a flattering estimate nised as the most popular composer of the day. The of Balfe's many excellent artistic qualifications, says, songs and choruses of the Opera were sLlng hummed7 " Against these great advantages is balanced the and whistled by all classes of society. The airs were want of conscientiousness which makes him con- arranged as waltzes, marches, and quadrilles, to the tented with the ISrst idea which presents itself, satisfaction no doubt of music publishers i and the regardless of dramatic truth, and considerate of same were deranged into every conceivable formS momentary eSect rather than artistic excellence; and easy and difficult, for the edification of pupils and the this it is that, with all his well-merited success with torture of their respective teachers. To peruse this the million, will for ever prevent his works from Opera now after an interval of more than forty years ranking among the classics of the art. On the other is an interesting study. It is not surprising that it hand, it must be owned that the volatility and spon- should have received almost universal acceptance taneous character of his music would evaporate It is replete mrith catching melodies and excel- through elaboration, either ideal or technical- and lent pleasing music. It includes some well-written that the element which makes it evanescent is that and effective choruses and concerted vocal music which also makes it universally popular." dramatically developed. It is noticeable, however, " I must agree with you," says Melmoth, in one of that much of the music appears to have been origi his famous FitzOsborne letters (I740), "that works nally composed to Italian words, and subsequent ly of the most permanent kind are not the effect of a adapted to the Engiish text with scant regard to the lucky moment, nor struck out at a single heat. The correct accentuation of the English language. The best performances, indeed, have generally cost the composer's predilection for the Italian school of most labour; and that ease which is so essential to music, in which he had been mainly educated, is Ene writing has seldom been attained without re- conspicuous in this Opera, as it is more or less peated and severe criticism." " Questo facile,)' said in its successors; at the same time a certain indivi- Paiesiello, " quanto difficile ! " duaiity of manner, which may be characterised as Balfe's rapidity in the preparation of some of his Ba1W61t, is recognisable in some of the songs and English Operas, composed to order and to time, was duets, in which English accent is too often made sub- really astonishing; for the mere mechanical labour servient to the exigencies of the music, which, in of writing the of a modern grand Opera, setting many instances, appears to have been composed aside the consideration of its composition, is a task before the words. Balfe was a genial Irishman, ancl his geniality is reflected in his compositions, in which $ A specimen of this method, " Agenda Parochialium Ecclesiarum," prirlted at Basle} in I488, V,'ill be shown at the forthcoming Caxton a national raciness of style, pleasing but ephemeraly Exhibition. is easily discoverable.

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