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In recent years, significant discoveries have altered the picture of the biography of Ottaviano Petrucci, filling in a number (though not all) of the gaps left in the work of Augusto Vernarecci over a century ago. Until recently, only a few archival documents had surfaced outside the city, mostly indirectly and as a result of research into some other subject. Recent discoveries by Franco Mariani, and by Teresa Maria Gialdroni and Agostino Ziino, however, have significantly helped to delineate what had been blank periods in Petrucci's life. As a result, much more is now known. This knowledge gives the main outline of his life. However, more can be learnt by looking for the many commercial and social dilemmas that Petrucci must have faced, and the professional desires that must have motivated him, both of which clothe the skeleton of this biography.

Within a given entry, the details for the earliest extant edition (with all its copies) are presented first, followed by discussion of cancel leaves for that edition. Any subsequent edition, or any partial reprinting, which Ottaviano Petrucci regarded as part of this issue—and which, as a result, musicologists have traditionally associated with it—is then presented under the same overall entry. This method produces some inconsistencies. The various editions that carry different dates are entered at different places in this catalogue. In addition, some “new” editions that have survived without colophon are entered at their presumed date. It also means the insertion of a first edition of Innocentius Dammonis's Laude during 1506. The justification for this decision lies in Petrucci's evident practice of re-dating editions that he produced in Venice, as well as first Fossombrone editions of Venetian titles.

This chapter is about repertorial matters, revealing Ottaviano Petrucci's attempts to supply content that would also appeal. The bulk of this chapter is concerned with the immediate stimuli for Petrucci's books—patronage, outside events, or individual promotion, while a final brief section looks at the contents of the books as epitomes of public taste. The chapter attempts to draw Petrucci's picture of his musical market, as he made his business decisions. These issues of choice and market are important, for they were the factors which caused Petrucci to publish music at all, and to select specific repertoires. Much of the rest of this chapter attempts to view Petrucci's output as a series of decisions, about repertoire and about market.

This chapter is about Ottaviano Petrucci's attempts to make a living from his books. It is generally accepted that Petrucci's music books were more expensive than those of his successors. The chapter presents a table, expanded to include a number of musical treatises and a few non-musical books when they provide additional data. There are several significant layers of evidence in this table. Foremost, of course, is the range of prices demanded for Petrucci's editions. This must weaken any argument derived from the alleged luxury status of the volumes. While they were at the more expensive end of the market, they were evidently within the reach of professional musicians or any institution that might have wished to acquire them. This brings, inevitably, to a discussion of the purchasers of his books, how many there might have been, and how far they form a distinct group or series of groups.

This book is a bibliographical study of Ottaviano Petrucci. For well over a century, he has been seen as a key figure in the history of music, and a producer of music to the highest professional and artistic standards. Indeed, scholars sometimes seem to suggest that he ushered in, single-handedly, a revolution in the availability of music and in the level and spread of musical literacy. While certainly an innovator, a disseminator, and in some measure the initiator of the great explosion in musical literacy to which Claudio Sartori refers, Petrucci was less significant in the history of music than some statements would imply. Therefore, while he was undoubtedly significant as the first to attempt the bulk dissemination of music through printing, his achievement in these areas needs to be assessed.

Ottaviano Petrucci applied to the Venetian Signoria in 1498 for a privilege to protect his right to print music. The responsible members of the council approved the petition on 25th May of that year. In his application, Petrucci began by praising the city of Venice for the manner in which it supported new inventions, to the greater glory of the city, and encouraged people to explore new ideas. He then pointed out that his own invention had cost him much labor and time, and he attempted to imply that he had discovered what many others had sought long and unsuccessfully; the discovery provided a convenient way of printing polyphony.

In order to start (and continue) printing music and other books, Ottaviano Petrucci needed to acquire a range of technical resources. These obviously included typographical material of various sorts, for music, text, and decoration: they also included both ink and paper, and the physical apparatus (principally the press). Apart from the paper, and the ink impressed on it, none of these survive: the only direct evidence lies in the printed books themselves, although there is indirect evidence from other printers' work and from some peripheral sources. Discussions of the evidence for each of these elements of book production fill this chapter. Relatively little is known about the materials and technology used for printing in Italy during the first century of printing. The earliest Italian descriptions of printing techniques were written long after Petrucci had finished work.

This chapter is concerned almost exclusively with the music books printed by Ottaviano Petrucci. The three books discussed here that have survived with his name attached (those of which, this book argues, represent the whole of his non-musical output) are in their own way more typical of the period in which they were printed. The great majority of the musical books of the time present to the reader a largely consistent outward appearance. They are oblong, in landscape format, normally about 165 x 236 mm in size, with six staves to a full page (although frequently fewer are present), printed with an elegant musical typeface, and with ornate initial letters for almost every composition or mass movement. Each has a title page that conforms to the new practice, prevalent since late in the previous century, of giving in simple form the contents of the book, and sometimes the name of its author.

This chapter shows a table or checklist of Ottaviano Petrucci's publications in chronological order. This list includes all titles published by Petrucci, including cancels and hidden editions. In addition, it includes, in sequence, books which are relegated to another chapter on “Ghosts”.

There are other cases in which one can be absolutely sure that a change indicates a concern for improving the readings. These are the cases where both the original and the corrected versions which survive, and especially where a change consists solely in altering a single specific reading. In common with many other printers of the period, Ottaviano Petrucci was apparently quite willing to undergo labor-intensive procedures to correct errors of faulty text or clefs, erroneous pitches or rhythmic values, or wrong folio numbers or signatures. Apart from the use of cancel leaves, seven ways of correcting the text seem to have been practiced during the 16th century. One or more of the other practices, however, can be found in almost all copies of Petrucci's books. Errata lists and complete second impressions on already printed pages are rare.

This chapter addresses one of the more thorny questions in the history of music printing, namely, the question of who was expected to buy the printed books. It examines what Ottaviano Petrucci and his employees did with the content of a book to make it useful and appealing. Thus, the chapter examines in-house decisions concerning matters such as format and layout, levels of responsibility about readings and accuracy, and some special features (for example, incomplete mass texts) found in the books. These help in the detection of Petrucci's view of the users of his book. Simply put, the chapter is about bibliographical and textual matters, reflecting Petrucci's attempts to make people like his books after they bought them.

Given the status of Ottaviano Petrucci in the history of music printing, and the long sequence of 18th- and 19th-century bibliographical and musicological studies that include his books, it is hardly surprising that he should have been assigned his fair number of ghostly issues and titles. This chapter's discussion tries to eliminate as many of these as possible from the future literature. This chapter includes lost editions among the entries in the bibliography when they were cited by reliable writers such as Fernando Colón. There are, however, other proposed editions for which this book can find little or no justification, and they have been relegated to this chapter. Apart from the special case of Paulus de Middelburgh's last title of 1523, the more obvious cases tend to fall into three different categories, which are given here.

The three extant non-musical books printed by Petrucci (with one other that was probably not published) are also of considerable importance. Indeed, there have been many bibliographers over the last two centuries who have written as if unaware of any of the musical publications. For every writer who discussed the role of Ottaviano Petrucci in the dissemination of music, there were several others who knew of his production of the Paulina, his (indirect) contacts with the Lateran Council, or his place in the publishing history of Baldassare Castiglione's work; even more knew Paulus de Middelburgh through his incunable publications. What is certainly evident, however, is that each played a significant role in the shaping of Petrucci's career at Fossombrone. Each, therefore, deserves consideration for its place in Petrucci's professional biography.

This chapter offers a complex bibliographical history of Ottaviano Petrucci's work. It seeks to bring a semblance of order to the chaos. It presents the evidence for detecting “hidden” editions, impressions of parts of a book, and cancel leaves and sheets. It also demonstrates the possibilities that exist for arranging these (often newly reported) printings in chronological order. The simplest means of detecting new editions or impressions is to compare each page of every copy of a title with the same page of every other copy. Petrucci was unable to keep type standing after he had seen a forme through the press. The type was needed for the pages that were to be set up next. Therefore, each new printing must have been started from scratch, and every detail of the text would have been set up again.

The patterns of dissemination of Ottaviano Petrucci's editions and the manner in which later printers and scribes repeated and changed his reportorial decisions are important aspects of his legacy. Equally important, however, is the manner in which his technical innovations and procedures spread, in Italy and other parts of Europe. These issues are, of course, related to the larger question of printing music at all. Here, the concern is solely with technical issues. It is significant, if not surprising, that Andrea Antico printed exclusively from woodblocks. He called himself a miniator, presumably a decorator of manuscript and printed pages. Although his hand has not been identified in any manuscripts, he probably had copied manuscripts for some time before his first publication in 1510.

This chapter contains concordance patterns for all music books published by Ottaviano Petrucci, arranged in alphabetical sequence by language. Latin incipits are followed by Italian and French sequences, and then by the few titles in Dutch, German, and Spanish, and finally by a sequence of titles to instrumental or untexted pieces. Within the Latin series, complete masses are entered first, followed by mass ordinary movements and sections, and then an alphabetical series of other incipits. At times the actual alphabetical sequence looks arbitrary. While titles show Petrucci's spelling, they are arranged in a sequence that corresponds to modern spellings. With some 600 concordant sources, and more continuing to surface, it has proved impossible to check each source, and a number of the following entries are necessarily derived from the recent scholarly literature.

This chapter does not set out to give all the information necessary to conduct research into Ottaviano Petrucci's printing. It is intended merely to meet two needs: to supply the data that will allow readers to use the bibliography and the prose chapters, in other words, to illustrate the arguments made there; and to supply sufficient data for researchers in libraries to be able to identify the material before them. Because these needs have been seen as paramount, as they should be for all bibliographical writing, many details are omitted here. There is no analysis, for example, of exactly which letters in the fonts of text type exist in ligatures; nor are measurements given for the chain-lines of the papers, or indeed for all the marks themselves.

This chapter lists the sources cited in the preceding chapter. The bibliographical citations given after these sources are restricted to references to facsimiles, complete editions of the source, or studies giving complete inventories or important information on the provenance of the source. (No bibliographical citations are given here for editions printed by Ottaviano Petrucci, since they are listed in extenso in the descriptions, identified by the number at the end of each entry.) The Census-Catalogue is a central bibliographical resource for the majority of the manuscripts mentioned. These citations are followed by reference to works in the source also found in Petrucci's edition which indicates that the third piece in edition No. Six of the catalogue is also found in this source, in one form or another.

This chapter falls into three sections: first come documents relating to Ottaviano Petrucci's life and activity; a second section contains related documents—principally Venetians—which provide details about citizenship, and other privileges; finally comes a small group of documents listing the contents of early collections, or specifically citing Petrucci's editions. This does not include ownership marks on extant copies. The first section is not as complete as this book intended. One principal reason is that, according to Don Ceccarelli, there are no longer any documents preserved in Fossombrone pertaining to dates before 1513. Some of the Notarial documents are now in the Archivio di Stato in Pesaro: other documents for the city from before 1513 were given to the Red Cross in 1952.