was naturally prominent, but many other cities took up the new industry with success.
The mechanical difficulties of music-printing are not generally appreciated.
The staff-lines should be continuous across the page, and yet
upon and between them must stand notes and other signs. It is easy to
make uniform types for all the latter, but not easy to apply them without
breaking the lines. Making two impressions not only increases cost, but
is mechanically delicate, since even a small variation in 'register' (location
on the paper) between the two printings vitiates the result. Petrucci's
success with this method is extraordinary in view of the fact that even on
modern presses it is practically abandoned. The problem was solved by
making the types for notes, bars and other characters with small portions
of the staff-lines attached to them (in all desired combinations) and then
setting these, with other types for the remaining portions of the staffs, in a
complicated mosaic, so exact in adjustment and so closely compacted that
when the whole is inked and applied to the paper, both notes and staffs
are produced in apparent continuity and perfection. (See an excellent
account in Grove's Dict. under 'Music-Printing.')
The above remarks apply only to printing from types, which can be cast in large quantities, set up in any desired combination, printed from, and then separated or 'distributed' so as to be used again in other combinations. To-day this process is employed mainly for books containing much literary matter or 'letter-press.' Sheet-music is usually printed from engraved plates—a wholly different process, which also began to be used in the 16th century (by Verovio of Rome in 1586). The first plates were made of copper and the engraving was laborious. The modern plan of using soft-metal plates and punching the notes and other characters by dies did not appear till about 1700.
As a clue to the spread of the new art and a help to tracing the many collections
thus put into circulation, some of the pioneers may be enumerated:—
At Venice we have Ottaviano dei Petrucci (d. 1539), born at Fossombrone in 1466, who went to Venice in 1491, secured a monopoly of music-printing there in 1498, issuing his first book in 1501, and returned to his birthplace in 1511, where he prosecuted work till 1523, completing a monumental series of over 30 collections of masses, motets, frottole and pieces for the lute (some in more than one volume or edition) by a great variety of composers; Andrea Antigo (d. 1539), who began at Rome in 1510, but moved to Venice in 1520; Girolamo Scotto (d. 1573), from 1539 one of the most prolific publishers of the time, as well as a composer of madrigals and canzone; Antonio Gardano, who began business in 1537, was soon in fierce competition with Scotto, and was succeeded in 1571 by his almost equally enterprising son Angelo (d. 1610); and Francesco Rampazetto (d. 1579), at work from about 1562. At Rome we note Valerio Dorico (d. 1567), with two books in 1531-3; Antonio Barré, at work in 1555-8; Alessandro Gardano (d. 1623), son of Antonio above, at work in 1584-91; and Simone Verovio, at work (with his copper-plate process) in 1586-1604.
