Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer 1538-1569: A Descriptive Bibliography and Historical Study.
Hammond, Susan Lewis
Mary S. Lewis. Antonio Gardano, Venetian Music Printer 1538-1569: A
Descriptive Bibliography and Historical Study.
Vol. 3: 1560-69. New York: Routledge, 2005. xii + 602 pp. index.
append. tbls. bibl. $135. ISBN: 0-82408-456-X.
The appearance of this final volume marks the completion of
Lewis's catalogue of the 442 music books printed by Antonio
Gardano, head of the most prolific music printing firm of the sixteenth
century. The transmission of music prints from the Gardano shop (under
the management of Antonio's sons until 1611) attests to the wide
circulation and use of music in courtly, private, civic, religious, and
educational settings. The firm's commercial success can be
attributed, in part, to Antonio's attention to strategies of
production, marketing, and distribution which marked the growing
industrialization of the music book trade.
Lewis precedes the catalogue with six introductory chapters that
position Gardano's editions within the context of printing
practices in sixteenth-century Venice. The 1560s proved to be a
particularly productive period for the Venetian firm, with at least 187
editions (109 of them newly printed), up from 108 in the 1550s and 143
in the 1540s. Gardano divided his attention between madrigals and other
Italian secular songs (by far the most important genres), motets,
masses, magnificats, and instrumental music. In chapter 3 Lewis adds to
our knowledge of the market and distribution system for Gardano's
books. She divides purchasers into amateur musicians, professionals,
bibliophiles, clergy, and large ecclesiastical institutions--a diverse
group with an array of abilities, customs, and preferences. Chapter 6
takes on the issue of marketing from the perspective of the firm's
1591 sales catalogue, which included music books dating back to
Antonio's tenure as head of the business. The intervening chapters
4 and 5 examine the presence of privileges taken out for Gardano's
music books and evidence of the printer's joint role as publisher.
The catalogue of music books from 1560 to 1569 (the year of
Gardano's death) follows the format established in Lewis's
earlier volumes, with the exception that concordances of individual
works are here excluded. Though this is an unfortunate omission, unlike
the first two decades of Gardano's activity, transmission of music
in the 1560s tended to follow printed books (traced in the
"Editions" section of each catalogue entry). Further, as Lewis
notes, our bibliographical knowledge of manuscripts from 1550 to 1600 is
"spotty at best" (81). Lewis's catalogue significantly
expands the information available in existing bibliographies. Alongside
details of collation, signature lines, technical notes, and lists of
contents, Lewis includes complete transcriptions of title pages and
dedications, the title and location of table of contents, and a history
of earlier and later editions of the work. Detailed listings of
locations of surviving copies and notes (the presence of the stamp of an
earlier owner, for instance) betray not only the decades of research and
countless libraries visited by Lewis but also the large geographic net
cast by Gardano's music books. Bibliographical listings and
literature connect Lewis's catalogue with standard reference works
(including Eitner, Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexicon [2nd
ed., 1959-60] and Vogel et al., Il Nuovo Vogel [1977]). Lewis numbers
the entries across her trilogy, with this third volume starting with 257
and ending at 442; RISM numbers (Repertoire international des sources
musicales, A/I/1-9, Einzeldrucke vor 1800, ed. K. Schlager [1971-92] and
B/I/1, Recueils imprimes XVIe-XVIIe siecles, ed. F. Lesure [1960]) flank
the right side of each entry. The wealth of information about
Gardano's music books would be enhanced by the inclusion of
illustrations of representative title pages, dedications, or music
notation--additions that would give a visual record of Gardano's
(and Lewis's) monumental achievement.
A series of five appendices trace first editions printed by Gardano
in the 1560s, Gardano prints in the libraries of the Fugger family of
Augsburg (perhaps the most famous Northern collectors of music at the
time), books financed by Gardano, publications of Antonio Gardano
available in 1591, and general descriptions of binder's copies
("collections of printed books bound together under one cover in a
single volume" [19]). Users of the catalogue benefit from indexes
of composers, text incipits, instrumental works, and short titles.
Lewis's study is an indispensable tool for scholars and
students of the first century of music printing and will remain a model
of descriptive bibliography and scholarship for the field.
SUSAN LEWIS HAMMOND
University of Victoria
