Presenter: Jane Bernstein (Tufts University)
Discussants: Bonnie J. Blackburn (Oxford) and Noel O’Regan (University of Edinburgh).
Rome ranked second only to Venice as a centre for music book production in Renaissance Italy. Yet unlike their Venetian counterparts, who standardized their music publications, Roman printers, experimented more readily and more consistently with the materiality of their books. Emphasizing the exceptionalism of Roman music publishing, this talk highlights the innovative printing technologies and book forms devised by bookmen in the Eternal City. By drawing on landmark publications, it reveals a synergistic relationship between music repertories and the materiality of the book, particularly during the post-Tridentine period, when musical idioms, both new and old, challenged printers to employ alternative printing methods and modes of book presentation in the creation of their music editions.
