- ing and book-selling as standard branches of commerce, so it led
also to music-publishing and music-selling. The value of this new agency was at once apparent. Though the early editions were small and the copies relatively expensive, yet through them masterworks now began to circulate in authentic form and to be studied and used as never before. An immense incentive was thus supplied both to producers and to users.
Throughout the Middle Ages the drafting of musical manuscripts and
even the pursuit of musical calligraphy as an art were common occupations
in monasteries and similar institutions. Every cathedral and
large church was obliged to supply its priests and choir with all needed
service-books, which were often marvels of laborious patience and interest.
But the time and effort required upon them were excessive, so
that they were costly or priceless. Naturally there was no effort to circulate
them. The knowledge of the larger musical works was therefore
limited to a few places and persons.
To relieve this difficulty, experiments were made in the 15th century with printing music from engraved wooden blocks, a whole page to a block. When movable types were first tried for letters by Gutenberg (c. 1440), the question at once arose whether the same device was not practicable for music, but the extreme difficulty of printing both staffs and notes at one impression postponed the solution of the problem. For a time the musical portions of books like missals were printed from blocks while the text was printed from type, and this continued till 1520 and occasionally after.
The earliest known printing of music from types was in 1476
by Ulrich Hahn of Rome, in 1481 by Jörg Reyser of Würzburg
and Ottavio Scotto of Venice, and during the next twenty years
by several others. In all these cases only Plain-Song was attempted,
and the process involved two impressions, the staffs
being in red, the notes in black. The first application of this
process to the more difficult problem of contrapuntal music
was in 1501 by Petrucci of Venice, followed in 1507 by Oeglin
of Augsburg, and before 1512 by Schöffer of Mayence. The
first to work out a one-impression process, notes and staffs together,
was the type-maker Pierre Haultin in 1525, whose types
were used from 1527 by Attaignant of Paris. Further progress
consisted in devising better types (as, for example, the round-headed
notes invented in 1530 by Briard of Avignon). The
publishing of music as a trade was now undertaken in various
places. Venice, being the chief centre of publishing in general,
