Music Printing

Its History and Development

By Daniel Brandon
Notable
People
 Ottaviano Petrucci
● Known as The father of modern music printing
● able to secure a twenty-year monopoly on
printed music in Venice during the 16th century.
● His printing shop used the triple-impression
method, in which a sheet of paper was pressed
three times. The first impression was the staff
lines, the second the words, and the third the
notes.
● This method produced very clean results,
though it was time-consuming and expensive.
 John Rastell
● Around 1520 in England, he developed a single-impression
method for printing music.
● With his method, the staff lines, words and notes were all part
of a single piece of type, making it much easier to produce
● This method however, produced messier results, as the staff
lines were often inexactly aligned and looked wavy on the
page.
● The single-impression method eventually triumphed over
Petrucci's and became the dominant mode of printing until
copper-plate engraving took over in the 17th century.
Music Printing
Methods and
Developments
 Scribed Music
● The earliest form of music
required hand-production.
● With scribed music, it was
very common to see inserted
pictures as well as decorative
symbols, letters, etc. carefully
etched into music
● Illuminated (decorated,
illustrated) manuscripts were
commonly seen in 13th, 14th
and 15th centuries
Wood-cut Printing
● simply a carved block of
wood where the characters
to be printed are left higher
than the surrounding wood.
● allowed printers to create
complex images such as
music which required variable
spatial placement of images
and symbols
 Moveable Type Printing
● the completion of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 using moveable type
marked the turning point in making printing of text a commercially
viable process.
● As the text printing industry progressed, so too did music printing.
● Gutenberg perfected movable type in the 1450s. He formed letters on
the edges of narrow slivers of lead. Then he arranged them into racks
called galleys.
● Printers inked the galleys and pressed them against paper.
● Through all of this Composers now had a new method of reproducing
music.
Finished, detailed movable type rack
The final results were incredibly more advanced, but
the amount of work required was way too much
 Etching/Engraved printing
(Lithography method)
● The use of moveable type for printing music yielded less that
satisfactory results in the early years and at least in the US, freehand
music engraving was favored from around 1698 till the late 1700's.
● based on the principle that one greasy substance will receive another
but that any greasy substance will repel water
● The oily ink adhered only to the greasy image area and was repelled
by the water-saturated non-image area. The image was then printed
with a special press in which a scraper bar was drawn across a sheet
of paper laid over the inked-up stone
Conclusion
● Man has gone to tremendous efforts to preserve
and reproduce music for generations
● God has blessed us with the amazing gift of
music and has allowed us access to sheet music
produced by these methods
● We should take studying music and music itself
seriously, reminding ourselves that music is truly
a gift from God.
Thank You!!!