The title of Ensemble Gentil Galant’s concert on February 2 refers not only to the popularity of music of the Franco-Flemish composers and the Italian composers who followed them in the early 16th century but, more specifically, to the source of this music in the printed books of the Venetian publisher, Ottaviano Petrucci. He was the first publisher to harness the technology of moveable type and multiple impression printing to print mensural polyphony, publishing some 67 editions and reprints between 1501 and 1520. His earliest publications Odhecaton A, Canti B and Canti C together contain hundreds of songs by the 15-16th century masters, such as Josquin, Isaac, Ockeghem, and Obrecht. Some survive only in these sources. He later published editions of masses and motets by these and other composers as well as Italian frottola and lute intablatures of Spinacino and others.
To apply the 15th century invention of moveable type to printing polyphonic mensural notation, Petrucci needed specialized printers who understood mensural music (where notes indicate a time value), could lay out multi-voice pieces, and set the exacting registration to align multiple impressions: first printing the staff lines and then overlaying the staves with notes in a second – and, if text was underlaid, a third – printing. In the 1520s, publishers developed a single impression method for printing music: each scale degree and each time was cast as a separate piece of type by creating the note along with its staff lines as a single piece of type. Appropriate pieces of type representing each note or rest with its staff lines were placed next to each other, allowing a printer to set an entire line of music.
These enterprising publishers marketed to the tastes of cultured amateur musicians interested in playing polyphonic music but not accustomed (or perhaps wealthy enough) to collect hand copied manuscripts. In so doing, they created the music publishing industry and preserved hundreds of works that we enjoy today. You can hear some of these pieces at the concert. Purchase tickets