Music Literature

The following curated lists focus on those print resources most helpful for research on or related to the music anthologies of the 16th and 17th centuries held in the Music Division's collections. These materials are available for use both on-site in the Performing Arts Reading Room and libraries elsewhere.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Recueils imprimés, XVIe-XVIIe siècles by François Lesure
Call Number: ML113.I6 vol. BI
Published/Created: c1960
This resource covers printed collections of the 16th-17th centuries. Countries included: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, USSR, Yugoslavia.
Bibliographie der musik-sammelwerke des XVI. und XVII. by Robert Eitner
Call Number: ML114.E36
Published/Created: 1877
"Bibliography of Music Collections of the 16th and 17th Centuries." Alphabetically organized, indexed, and with locations given for all the pieces mentioned, this work became the model for later music bibliographies.
Report of the Librarian of Congress and Report of the Superintendent of the Library Building and Grounds for the fiscal year ending June 30
Call Number: Z733.U57A
Published/Created: 1905-1922
Available online External
Annual Reports of the Library of Congress, which can include details of notable acquisitions, particularly from the first half of the 20th century.
Quarterly journal of the Library of Congress
Call Number: Z881.U49 A3
Available online External
In addition to publishing lists of the most outstanding annual purchases and division activities (previously covered in the Annual Reports), the Quarterly Journal featured substantive articles on selective topics: e.g., Richard S. Hill’s essay summarizing our auction results from the sale of Baron Horace Landau’s collection.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Ottaviano Petrucci by Stanley Boorman
Call Number: ML112.B75 2006
ISBN: 0195142071
Published/Created: 2005-11-24
The innovative work in design, typography, and content of music printer and publisher Ottaviano Petrucci (1446-1539) became the standard by which all following printers measured themselves. This book is a bibliographic study of the output of the Petrucci presses, laying emphasis on the professional career of Petrucci. It includes a detailed study of technique and house-style, examining the market forces that drove Petrucci's publishing decisions, and provides a detailed catalogue ofeditions and copies.Stanley Boorman has made a study of the output of Petrucci's presses for 25 years.
English music printing, 1553-1700 by D. W. Krummel
Call Number: ML112.K75
ISBN: 0197217885
Published/Created: 1975
This study examines the printing of music in Britain from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with chapters on music patents, Psalm books, part books, song books, and broadsides. It includes many black-and-white illustrations, a chronological synopsis, a bibliography, and an index.
Editing Music in Early Modern Germany by Susan Lewis Hammond
Call Number: ML112 .L62 2007
ISBN: 9780754655732
Published/Created: 2007-10-28
Editing Music in Early Modern Germany argues that editors played a critical role in the transmission and reception of Italian music outside Italy. Like their counterparts in the world of classical learning, Renaissance music editors translated texts and reworked settings from Venetian publications, adapting them to the needs of northern audiences. Their role is most evident in the emergence of the anthology as the primary vehicle for the distribution of madrigals outside Italy. As a publication type that depended upon the judicious selection and presentation of material, the anthology showcased editorial work. This book suggests that music editors defined the appropriation of Italian music through the same processes of adaptation, transformation and domestication evident in the broader reception of Italy north of the Alps.
English song-books, 1651-1702; a bibliography with a first-line index of songs by Cyrus Lawrence Day and Eleanore Boswell Murrie
Call Number: ML120.G7 D31
Published/Created: 1940
An excellent bibliography listing 252 separate books with full bibliographical descriptions for each, an index of first lines for 4,150 songs, separate indices for composers, authors, singers and actors, tunes and aires, song-books, printers, publishers, and booksellers.
Anthologies of music : an annotated index by Sterling E. Murray
Call Number: ML128.A7 M87 1992
ISBN: 0899900615
Published/Created: 1992-11-01
Murray's guide indexes 33 historically-arranged anthologies (including Prentice-Hall's Must Scores Omnibus, Harper's The Comprehensive Study of Music) and the Norton Anthology of Western Music) and cites 3,532 items by more than 600 composers. It is arranged alphabetically by composer and sub-arranged by title of work (with anonymous compositions coming first). Each entry provides (as available) the complete title and date of the composition, the anthology in which it is found and its location and pagination there, and an indication of the presence of such "editorial accessories" as text translations, incipits with original notation, partial signatures, and nontraditional clefs.
Instrumental music printed before 1600; a bibliography by Howard Mayer Brown
Call Number: ML128.I65 B77
Published/Created: 1965
This work lists and describes all of the 400 books containing music for instruments that were published during the sixteenth century, when instrumental music was born. This bibliography covers music for virtually every sixteenth-century instrument, and every one of the usual combinations of instruments with voices: music for solo lute, guitar, vihuela, harpsicord or organ, music for voice and one accompanying instrument, and for instrumental ensembles, and treatises devoted to instrumental playing and such practices as ornamentation.
The Latin motet : indexes to printed collections, 1500-1600 by Harry B. Lincoln
Call Number: ML128.M67 L56 1993
ISBN: 0931902800
Published/Created: 1993-01-01
This study includes 19,000 melodic incipits from 7,000 pieces of vocal polyphony found in over 300 collections. Included are five parts: Composer index with incipits, index to first lines, thematic locator index, and short title index to sources.
Vocal compositions in German organ tablatures, 1550-1650 : a catalogue and commentary by Cleveland Johnson
Call Number: ML128.O6 J63 1989
ISBN: 082402012X
Published/Created: 1989
This text details vocal compositions in German organ tablatures, in both print and manuscript.
Paroles de musique (1658-1694) : catalogue des Livrets d'airs de différents auteurs publiés chez Ballard by Anne-Madeleine Goulet
Call Number: ML128.S3 G68 2007
ISBN: 2870099460
Published/Created: c2007
This catalog is a critical edition of the lyrics of the 1220 airs published by the publishers Robert and Christophe Ballard in their 37 Books of Airs by different authors between 1658 and 1694.
Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer, 1538-1569 by Mary Lewis
Call Number: ML134.5.G47 L5 1988
ISBN: 9780824084561
Published/Created: 1998-2005
Three volumes total (v. 1. 1538-1549 -- v. 2. 1550-1559 -- v. 3. 1560-1569), this series focuses on the publications of Antonio Gardano. Gardano's publications are among the most important sources of sixteenth-century music.
Pierre I Ballard et Robert III Ballard : imprimeurs du roy pour la musique, 1599-1673 by Laurent Guillo
Call Number: ML145.B12 A3 2003
Published/Created: 2003
Between the disappearance of provincial publishing in the 1610s and the appearance of musical engraving around 1660, the Ballard typographic workshop enjoyed a virtual monopoly on musical publishing in France. This study identifies and describes the 650 editions published by this workshop during the directions of Pierre I then Robert III Ballard, covering a period which goes from the last fires of the Renaissance (Orlando de Lassus, Claude Le Jeune, Eustache Du Caurroy) to the dawn of Versailles splendor (Henry Du Mont, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers). The bibliography is supplemented by summaries of the workshop, the family, the repertoire, the techniques and available bibliographical sources.
Music Printing in Renaissance Venice by Jane A. Bernstein
Call Number: ML405 .B47 1998
ISBN: 0195102312
Published/Created: 1998-10-29
Venetian music print culture of the mid-sixteenth century is presented here through a study of the Scotto press, one of the foremost dynastic music publishers of the Renaissance. For over a century, the house of Scotto played a pivotal role in the international book trade, publishing in avariety of fields including philosophy, medicine, religion, and music. This book examines the mercantile activities of the firm through both a historical study, which illuminates the wide world of the Venetian music printing industry, and a catalog, which details the music editions brought out bythe firm during its most productive period. A valuable reference work, this book not only enhances our understanding of the socioeconomic and cultural history of Renaissance Venice, it also helps to preserve our knowledge of a vast musical repertory.
Valerio Dorico by Suzanne G. Cusick; George Buelow (Editor)
Call Number: ML427.D7 C9 1981
ISBN: 0835711730
Published/Created: 1981-06-01
A biography of the 16th-century Roman music printer.
Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England by Jeremy L. Smith
Call Number: ML427.E27 S65 2003
ISBN: 0195139054
Published/Created: 2003-02-20
In the London of Shakespeare and William Byrd, Thomas East was the premier, often exclusive, printer of music. As he tells the story of this influential figure in early English music publishing, Jeremy Smith also offers a vivid overall portrait of a bustling and competitive industry, in whichcomposers, patrons, publishers, and tradesmen sparred for creative control and financial success. It provides a truly comprehensive study of music publishing and a new way of understanding the place of musical culture in Elizabethan times. In addition, Smith has compiled the first completechronology of East's music prints, based on both bibliographical and paper-based evidence.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Boorman, Stanley, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, and Donald W. Krummel. "Printing and publishing of music." In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, 2001.
Boorman, Stanley. “Thoughts on the popularity of printed music in 16th-century Italy.” Fontes Artis Musicae, vol. 48, no. 2 (2001), pp. 129–44.
Carter, Stephanie Louise. Music Publishing and Compositional Activity in England, 1650-1700 External. A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2010.
Charteris, Richard. "A Neglected Anthology of sacred vocal music dating from the Sixteenth Century.” Music & Letters, vol. 90, no. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp. 1-34.
Filippi, Daniele V. "A Sound Doctrine: Early Modern Jesuits and the Singing of the Catechism." Early Music History, vol. 34 (2015), pp. 1-43.
Ford Hart, Eric. "The Restoration Catch." Music & Letters, vol. 34, no. 4 (1953), pp. 288-305.
Gavito, Cory M. “‘Quasi Industre Giardiniero’: Giovanni Stefani’s Amorosi Anthologies and Their Concordant Sources.” The Journal of Musicology, vol. 33, no. 4, (2016), pp. 522–68.
Hammond, Susan Lewis. "Pierre Phalèse as music Editor: The Madrigal Anthology Musica Divina (1583)." Fontes Artis Musicae, vol. 51, no. 1, (2004), pp. 93–110.
Hammond, Susan Lewis. "Selling the madrigal: Pierre Phalèse II and the four ‘Antwerp anthologies." Yearbook of the Alamire Foundation, vol. 6 (2008), pp. 225-252.
Herissone, Rebecca. "Playford, Purcell and the Functions of Music Publishing in Restoration England." Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 65, no 2 (2010), pp. 243-290.
Hoekstra, Gerald R. “The Reception and Cultivation of the Italian Madrigal in Antwerp and the Low Countries, 1555-1620.” Musica Disciplina, vol. 48, American Institute of Musicology Verlag Corpusmusicae, GmbH (1994), pp. 125-187.
Jeż, Tomasz. “Significance of Madrigals Anthologies in the Reception of European Repertory in Northeastern Europe." Musicology Today, vol. 1 (2004) pp. 49-63.
Kerman, Joseph. "Elizabethan Anthologies of Italian Madrigals." Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 4 no. 2 (Summer 1951), pp. 122-138.
Packer, Dorothy S. "Collections of Chaste Chansons for the Devout Home (1613-1633)." Acta Musicologica, vol. 61, Fasc. 2 (May-Aug. 1989), pp. 175-216.
Reese, Gustave. “The First Printed Collection of Part-Music: (The Odhecaton).” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 1 (1934), pp. 39–76.
Temperley, Nicholas. "John Playford and the Metrical Psalms." Journal of the American Musicological Society, vol. 25, no. 3 (1972), pp. 331-378.
Veldhorst, Natascha. “Pharmacy for the Body and Soul: Dutch Songbooks in the Seventeenth Century.” Early Music History, vol. 27 (2008), pp. 217–85.

Anthologies of Musical Works from the 15th-17th Centuries in the Library of Congress Music Division

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Music Literature