All discussions about 16th-century music publishing must begin with the esteemed Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci, whose achievements paved the way for Italian dominance in music publishing throughout the century. Reportedly, the number of titles produced in all of 16th-century Europe was dwarfed by the quantity of Italian imprints issued by Petrucci and his many successors (Boorman, 2001). Noteworthy are two publishing giants who emerged in Venice in the 1530s:

• Antonio Gardano’s press, which issued close to 100 anthologies alone between 1538 and 1568, in addition to hundreds of single composer works
• Girolamo Scotto, who is credited with 409 editions – the majority being single composer works.

Noteworthy examples include two anthologies that represent the first and final publications of Antonio Gardano’s firm.

Marketing

The three examples listed below expose a common marketing strategy used by Italian music publishers at that time, which was to prominently display a famous composer’s name on the title page of an anthology in the hopes that it would bolster sales. This deceptive practice resulted in less transparency between single-composer volumes and anthology collections.

In all three of these examples only a fraction of the contents are actually attributed to the "brand name" composer featured in the title.

Tablature

Besides producing the first known example of printed polyphonic music, Petrucci also pioneered print instrumental music in tablature – a genre that thrived in both Gardano and Scotto’s firms as the century progressed. The Music Division’s outstanding and extremely rare examples of these Italian tablatures are listed below. The scarceness of original copies of these publications is striking: for many of the titles listed, the Music Division is the only U.S. holding library, with five or fewer extant copies reported worldwide. Links to the Library of Congress Online Catalog are provided when possible.

Gardano, Antonio

• Intabolatura de lauto di Dominico Bianchini (1546)
• Intabolatura de lauto di Francesco da Milano (1546)
• Intabolatura de lauto di M. Francesco Milanese et M. Perino (1547)

Scotto, Girolamo

• Intabolatvra di lauto: libro nono intitolato il Bembo (1549)
• La intabolatvra de lauto (Borrono) (1563)
• Intabolatura de lauto de diversi autori (1563)
• Libro primo d'intabvlatvra da levto di M. Antonio di Becchi Parmegiano (1568)
• Musica de’virtuosi della florida capella (1569)
• La nobilità di Roma (1571)
• Il primo libro de madrigali a sei voci (1571)
• Dolci affetti madrigali a cinque voci (1582)

Pages 132-133 from Fronimo dialogo di Vincentio Galilei (1584) are pictured below. The first edition of this work was issued in two parts in 1569 by publisher Girolamo Scotto. Scotto heavily revised the second edition in 1584, including 48 pieces in tablature within the body of the text and a collection of 60 pieces at the end of this volume.

Italian Influence in the North

As Italy’s publishing domination showed signs of decline, there was already a significant increase in the popularity of musical works by Italian composers in German-speaking lands as well as in England. The anthology format was the ideal vehicle to introduce audiences north of the Alps to Italy’s most successful export – the repertoire of their finest composers.

Between 1555 and 1620 more than eighty-five volumes containing Italian madrigals were printed in Antwerp and other cities of the Low Countries (Hoekstra, 1994) External. Contributing to that output was publisher Pierre Phalèse, who over an eight-year period from 1583-1591, published four madrigal anthologies (referred to as the ‘Antwerp anthologies’). Altogether they comprise 268 Italian songs by at least 65 different composers and are among the earliest collections of Italian madrigals to appear north of the Alps (Hammond, 2008) External. Two examples from the ‘Antwerp Anthologies’ in the Music Division's collections are Musica Divina (1583) and Harmonia celeste (1583).

Luca Marenzio’s madrigal "Liquide perle" was a “favoured works among connoisseurs and w[as] included on many occasions in anthologies, transcribed for lute, or parodied in different ways, including in spiritual contrafacta.” (Marco Bizzarini, La Compagnia del Madrigale) The piece was first published in the highly admired Primo Libro de madrigali a cinqve voci (1580) by Marenzio; according to Bizzarini, there were at least nine reprintings of this work in Venice and many republications – complete or partial – outside of Italy. Phalèse selected the madrigal for his Musica Divina and Thomas East /William Byrd in London included the popular work in his 1588 ‘englished’ edition. This latter example, however, demonstrated a deeper commitment to and assimilation of the Italian style into England’s musical scene compared with the Antwerp edition.