Ottaviano Petrucci: A Catalogue Raisonnéby Stanley Boorman

Ottaviano Petrucci: A Catalogue Raisonné by Stanley BoormanReview by: DAVID FALLOWSJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Summer 2007), pp. 415-421Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2007.60.2.415 .

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1. Two bibliographical curiosities could be mentioned, ironic though they are in a work ofsuch fastidious bibliography: first, despite the date 2006 on the title page I bought a copy on20 November 2005 through perfectly normal commercial channels; and second, contrary to allgood bibliographical practice, I have cited the title not from the title page, which seems to havetwo errors (Catalogue Raisonne instead of A Catalogue Raisonné), but from the front cover andthe spine.

2. The arguments for this date are not yet in print but are summarized in Birgit Lodes, “Ananderem Ort, auf andere Art: Petruccis und Mewes’ Obrecht-Drucke,” Basler Jahrbuch für hi-storische Musikpraxis 25 (2001): 85–111.

Reviews

Ottaviano Petrucci: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Stanley Boorman. Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xii, 1281 pp.1

With Harmonice musices odhecaton A, published some time in 1501,Ottaviano Petrucci produced the first known book of printed polyphony:over two hundred pages long, full of intricate music. Even so, his real impor-tance is that he kept his business going for the next twenty years. Between1501 and March 1509, when he suddenly stopped printing for two years,he issued some fifty music books in Venice, all with the same oblong format(entirely new to printed books of any kind), all with the same typography,all thoroughly distinctive. When he started up again in his hometown ofFossombrone—some 200 km south of Venice—he kept his main external fea-tures for the music books, even if he reduced the cost of his paper and his set-ting. He kept to the size of 17 x 24 cm; he kept to six staves per page; and hecontinued to use the same beautiful type for his music.

Oddly enough, he kept those dimensions whether he was presenting thecontents in choirbook format—cantus collateralis—or as a set of partbooks;and he kept the outward dimensions even for lute tablatures. It was presum-ably part of his marketing strategy that the very shape announced a book asbeing a Petrucci music print. That he stayed in business for twenty years, be-ginning with no known market at all, is the proof that it worked. He set thehistory of commercial music printing on its way.

So far as we now know, he was entirely alone in this until 1507, whenGregor Mewes in Basel2 and Erhard Öglin in Nuremberg borrowed his tech-niques for their own publications, both initially with disastrous results; a bit



416 Journal of the American Musicological Society

later Peter Schöffer the younger used them for some of the loveliest musicbooks ever printed. But these were flashes in the pan, at least musically speak-ing, as were others in the next years until the arrival of Pierre Attaingnant in1528 brought another music publisher with a coherent program and a com-mercial strategy. Petrucci changed the world less by his typographical innova-tions than by functioning as a music publisher, supplying a “product” that wasinstantly recognizable and presumably sold to a niche public. StanleyBoorman estimates a print run of 300 to 500 for each edition (pp. 363–66). Ifso, even at a conservative estimate, well over 20,000 of these externally identi-cal and really rather expensive music books flooded the European markets inthe first quarter of the sixteenth century.

What nobody knows is how he balanced his accounts. It must have beendone at least partly by the regularity of publication. In the early years he wasaveraging a new book every two months. Perhaps there was also substantialpatronage, though the details of this are very hard to pin down. Certainlythere was clear planning in series: the three volumes of Canti, the motet sets,the nine volumes of frottole, and particularly the books that would seem on theface of it the riskiest of the lot—the series of mass books, nearly all of them fea-turing a single composer. Those last may be the key to everything: if he was tooffer his public the best then he had to include the best music, and he there-fore needed to offer mass cycles by Josquin, Brumel, Obrecht and the others,because these were agreed to be the most important compositions of theirtime. So even though his prints show a visible tailing off of physical quality asthe years progress there is never any apparent sense of financial crisis: through-out Petrucci’s publications the clear message is of confidence—confidence thathe has the right market, confidence that he can supply the right quality for thatmarket.

Plainly music printing would have happened with or without Petrucci. Hewas just the right man in the right place. Even so, the technical and commer-cial difficulties he faced must have been enormous. For example, the triple-impression printing that he used for his earliest volumes certainly built ondouble-impression techniques used by earlier printers, but nobody has identi-fied triple-impression printing before Petrucci. Given that each sheet neededto go through the press six times if both sides were to be printed, damp-control and thus registration presented major challenges—as indeed the earlyprints of Mewes and Öglin demonstrate. What is true is that Petrucci’s techni-cal innovations led nowhere in the long run. Some later printers followed histechnique, notably Peter Schöffer the younger. But his immediate successorsin Italy made heavy use of woodblocks; and it was Attaingnant’s invention oftype-pieces including staff lines that really brought music printing into a com-mercially viable sphere. Petrucci simply showed that it could be done; and farmore importantly he showed that there was a public—though we still haveonly the vaguest clues as to who that public was and how he reached it.



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It is a heroic story that needed telling afresh. For the past sixty years wehave relied mainly on Sartori’s remarkably fine catalogue of 1948.3 But thedevelopments in music bibliography during the 1950s and 1960s openedthe way to new understanding, most particularly that Petrucci’s output in-cluded far more different editions and different states than Sartori or anybodyelse had suspected. At the same time the bibliographical issues were so com-plex that they were not easily grasped: Jeremy Noble’s identification of newJosquin editions in 1978 seems to have been overlooked in recent editionsof his music; Stanley Boorman’s 1977 analysis of the original Odhecaton—showing that only 51 of its 104 leaves had survived—is of such baffling com-plexity that Boorman himself sometimes seems to report on it wrongly.4 Butthis was what made it decisively clear to the musicological public that we badlyneeded a new and more informed study of Petrucci and his achievement.

I may have been present at the start of this book. In December 1967 thefirst ever British conference of music research students took place in Hull. Inthose days when musicological conferences were very rare outside Germanyand the annual AMS conference, it was a heady experience for startingMaster’s students, among them Boorman and myself. I certainly came awaywith my head spinning. One of the major events was Jeremy Noble talkingabout Petrucci, making it clear that there was work for a whole team of peoplesorting out what happened here. By the end of the academic year Boormanwas totally committed to the study of Petrucci. Forty years later he has pro-duced what can only be described as his life’s work. He has done much elseover the years, of course, but almost all of it leading towards this passionateexploration of Petrucci in all his aspects.

Its core is obviously the catalogue, four hundred pages of close observa-tion. Boorman describes every known copy in magnificent detail. He identifiesand classifies every watermark. Every handwritten correction is reported andcategorized. Every traceable provenance is explored. Each description endswith a commentary, sometimes running to two full pages of closely packedanalysis. Anybody who ever thought that an early music print is just a reposi-tory for music will come away from these commentaries with a new view ofthat world.

Before the catalogue, though, comes an equally long discussion of thebroader matters, some of which Boorman characteristically describes as “little

3. Claudio Sartori, Bibliografia delle opere musicali stampate da Ottaviano Petrucci (Florence:Olschki, 1948).

4. Stanley Boorman demonstrated (alongside much else) that in the only known copy of the“first” edition fols. 9–16, 83–86, and 89–95 are actually from the second edition (“The ‘First’Edition of the Odhecaton A,” this Journal 30 [1977]: 183–207); but here in his “ConcordanceLists” (pp. 855–1087) he reports the works on fols. 9–16 (but not the others) as though they ex-isted in the first edition, complete with details of the ascriptions; for Mureau’s Je ne fay plus (fols.10v–11r) he oddly reports the first edition but not the second.




more than an introduction to some of the relevant issues” (p. 9) but whichtakes the reader through a wide-ranging landscape of topics in twelve essays,of which the most substantial are “Biography” (pp. 23–76), “Petrucci’sRepertoire and Its Sources” (pp. 265–330), and “The Dissemination ofPetrucci’s Books and Repertoire” (pp. 331–82). In some ways the key chapteris the one in which Boorman goes through the musical publications ofPetrucci in order and in smaller groups, suggesting ways in which they belongtogether. The three Canti volumes are easy enough; the early motet volumeshe sees as two in choirbook format followed by two quite different ones inpartbooks. The early mass volumes he groups as a “Ferrara-based” group ofJosquin, Obrecht, Brumel, Ghiselin, La Rue, and Agricola followed by a sepa-rate group of De Orto, Isaac, and Weerbeke. He separates the first three booksof Frottole—issued within ten weeks and with strong Veronese connections—from the next three, which he sees as primarily Venetian. That way he showsthe outlines of the rationale and the publishing strategy that made Petrucci’senterprise possible. It begins to look as though Petrucci did not increase thepublic for his editions; he (I assume Boorman would add) was just sensitive tohis times and reacted to the needs. On the other hand, it is easy to counterthat the six editions he printed of Josquin’s first book of masses made thatmusic far more widely available across Europe than any polyphony up to thatpoint and until Verdelot’s first book of four-voice madrigals in 1538. Petruccimay not have had comparable success with all of his output, but all majorachievements are built on the back of hard slog.

Among the propositions hard to believe as formulated here is Boorman’sconviction that the series of mass publications resulted initially from a commis-sion from the court of Ferrara. It is true that the sequence of the first threemass volumes—Josquin, Obrecht, Brumel—precisely reflects the order inwhich those three became head of the Ferrara chapel; but the dates hardly fitthe theory. Josquin’s first book of masses was issued on 27 September 1502,but the first known reference to him in court correspondence is only six weeksearlier, on 14 August. As for Obrecht, the book was published in March 1503,before Josquin’s arrival at the court, not to say a year and a half beforeObrecht arrived; and the Brumel book was published in June 1503, threeyears before Brumel would arrive and two years before anybody could haveguessed that Obrecht would die so young. I prefer to put the cart behind thehorse here: the court of Ferrara followed the lead provided by Petrucci, goinginevitably for the most famous and fashionable figures. Nothing that Boormansays convinces me that it was not Petrucci who set the agenda. In that respectBoorman shows the critical myopia that is often seen in people who devote somuch time to a single figure: that he can underestimate that figure.

To conclude the study, Boorman devotes a further three hundred pages toa full listing of concordant sources and modern editions for every piecePetrucci printed (pp. 855–1142). The three sections of his book can thereforecarry the titles “Analysis,” “Bibliography,” and “Concordance,” enabling



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Boorman to preface each with a large facsimile of one of the letters first usedon the front of the three Canti volumes. Sadly, there are no other facsimiles,even though at least one is promised (p. 147n68). Much could have beengained from including some watermark reproductions, for example. But thenthis is a book that shows a certain tension between author and publisher.

This Concordance is the most quixotic section, since its assembly takesBoorman a very long way indeed from his main bibliographical topic.Obviously enough, there are many additions any specialist could make here,though it has to be said that Boorman’s listing is generally very accurate.5Even so, the state of play on this has changed. A simple relisting of sources isnow less interesting than some kind of a statement about which sources lookas though they may be related to Petrucci’s prints, which may predatePetrucci, which belong to an entirely unrelated stemmatic tradition. Many ofthe ascriptions need caution, whether because they have been contradictedelsewhere or because they merit contradiction or at least questioning. The so-cial history of any piece now goes way beyond the sources that contain it, tosources containing other pieces based on its material, to literary references,and so on. But the most serious consequence of including all this informationis that the sheer size of the book has resulted in a loss of quality control of akind that a major university press ought not to allow. There are many typo-graphical errors that should have jumped to the eye of the sleepiest proof-reader;6 and those in their turn lead the user to fear that less easily checkeditems may not have been given the care they merit.

The designer of this book evidently hates readers or at the very least has nointerest in reading. To begin with, it is far too heavy to read without a readingstand: anybody used to reading would have divided it into two volumes. Morethan that, the footnotes are not just buried away but put at the end of eachchapter, which is about the worst place for them to be—this in an age when

5. A detailed check of his listings for theCanti C (1504) revealed a few nasty slips: the uniquefour-voice Je ne me puis tenir d’aimer (no. 53) is treated as though it were the much more famousfive-voice setting credited to Josquin; the unique four-voice Se congié pris (no. 24) is wronglyidentified with the three-voice piece by Agricola; Loyset Compere’s L’autre jour me chevauchoye(no. 47) is confused with a piece on the same text in I-CT, 95–96, and in I-Fn, 164–167;L’amour de moy (no. 5) is wrongly identified with a different setting in I-CT, 95–96; a concor-dance given for Japart’s unique De tous biens plaine setting (no. 60) is in fact the setting creditedto Bourbon in Petrucci’sOdhecaton A (where it is listed correctly).

6. As a more or less random example (but one that wasted a lot of time), in the catalogueBoorman measures each copy to the nearest millimeter (hard to do with early bound books and inany case almost always just a function of the trimming): normally it comes to something like 164 x237 mm (since all of them are the same size, about 17 x 24 cm); but occasionally (usually withcopies in Berlin) he gives the breadth before the height, which somebody should have noticed;but then you see (p. 480) two partbooks in Montecassino given as 169 x 134 and 169 x 135 mm.Comparison with other partbooks in Montecassino shows that the 134 and 135 are typos for 234and 235. I cannot believe my own luck in having had so many editors who care more.




for the past twenty years any home computer program has managed effort-lessly to put footnotes at the bottom of the page. And in general the designdoes nothing to help you round this enormous book.

As an example, I would cite my interest in the sources and origins of theMotetti de la Corona (1514). First it needed to be located in the catalogue. Ihad already been using the book enough to have a permanent marker in thepages where each of Petrucci’s publications is briefly listed (pp. 411–13). Herethe book is reported as item no. 55 in the catalogue. That is easily enoughfound on pp. 760–74 because, for the catalogue at least, there are decent run-ning heads. But here (p. 772) Boorman says that he has discussed a possibleorigin in chapter 9. Chapter numbers are not included in the running heads,even though he always refers to chapters by their number (what else could hedo?). So the only way to find chapter 9 is to go to the table of contents (whereyou need another permanent marker because he cross-refers a lot), showingthat the chapter stretches to 55 pages, but eventually (p. 306) there is a men-tion of the book’s origins being explainable by the political situation inUrbino. This carries a reference to footnote 115: on to p. 326, where thefootnote refers me to “Boorman, Petrucci, pp. 48–52.” On to the bibliogra-phy to find out what “Boorman, Petrucci” may be: at pp. 1180–81 there are acouple of dozen entries for Boorman’s work, most including the wordPetrucci in their title but none having it in that italicized form. Eventually,though, I realize that doctoral theses normally have their titles in italics in thisbibliography, just not in the case of Boorman’s Petrucci at Fossombrone (whichin any case really needs to be in italics, not quotes, if only because he has twoarticles with that same title). So it is in his thesis, which, like many other read-ers, I do not have. Only later, on a methodical reading of the entire book, didI find a further reference on p. 266, which at last gives the information thatBoorman had once suggested that it was a betrothal gift for Giuliano de’Medici and Filiberta of Savoy but—he hastily and characteristically adds—“this is exactly the sort of case that it is dangerous to construct.” Amen to that;but it was an awful lot of riffling through the thin and slippery pages of thebook to reach this very meager piece of information. The point of my narra-tive is to suggest that the book’s size resulted in the publisher, the designer,the editor (if there was one), and the proofreader (if there was one) entirelygiving up.

But that’s enough fooling around—enough just to show that the book isnot easy to use and must in any case be used with a bit of care. For the rest wehave a massive and comprehensive exploration of Petrucci and his world, theresult of endless thought about every aspect of his output as well as inex-haustible interest in all aspects of printing and bibliography, particularly asthey concern the early sixteenth century. It is easy enough to say that it sup-plants everything available on early music bibliography. It is easy enough to saythat almost every page of the introductory study contains information or ideasof absorbing interest and often of startling novelty. It is easy enough to say



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that everything is argued with the fierce intelligence that has always character-ized Boorman’s work. In fact it is hard to see how it can be superseded.There’s plenty to disagree with; there are plenty of little footnotes to be writ-ten about it. But the study of Petrucci and his time has just moved up into anew dimension.7

DAVID FALLOWS

Empress Marie Therese and Music at the Viennese Court, 1792–1807, byJohn A. Rice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xx, 386 pp.

The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, andIdealists, edited by William Weber. Bloomington and Indianapolis: IndianaUniversity Press, 2004. vii, 269 pp.

Pairings can be complementary and synergistic, unequal and antagonistic, orbits of both. The two books under review here relate to one another in fasci-nating ways, pointing up differences in methodology and discourse that ulti-mately lead to deeper questions, inquiring into the past actions of others whilequerying why and how we do what we do today. John Rice finds EmpressMarie Therese, the female patron at the apex of the social pyramid in Viennaat the turn of the nineteenth century, deserving of greater recognition for herrole in shaping Viennese musical culture during this revolutionary period.Although the system of musical patronage long associated with feudalism andits institutions was weakened after the collapse of the ancien régime, and artistsbegan to cultivate associations with wealthy members of the nobility and inthe marketplace in larger numbers, a version of the old system continued atthe Habsburg court under Empress Marie Therese. Indeed, Rice finds that the“musical cultures of the court and the nobility were more similar than theymight appear in a musicological literature that has focused so doggedly onHaydn and Beethoven” (p. 8). As a musical patron, collector, arbiter of taste,and performer, the empress was a fundamental “actor” or agent of change anddevelopment (although Rice doesn’t frame his argument in these terms),whereas for William Weber and cohort “agency” is a complex phenomenonprobed from various theoretical perspectives in different time periods and lo-cales. How the dynamics of emerging democratization and free markets meshwith these musical plots is at issue in each of these studies.

In a concise introductory chapter Rice paints a detailed portrait of the dy-namic and enterprising Empress Marie Therese (not to be confused with her

7. But the enumeration will probably never end. As I correct the proofs of this review I learnthat on 23 May Sotheby’s in London auctioned five early Petrucci books (the second edition oftheOdhecaton and the first four books of frottole) for £90,000 to a private collector.



Documents

Ottaviano Petrucci: A Catalogue Raisonnéby Stanley Boorman