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[Piero]

(b Florence, c1480; d after 1545). Italian theorist and composer. Nothing is known of Aaron’s early training, his teacher, or his career before 1516. He claims to have had ‘the greatest friendship and familiarity’ with Josquin, Obrecht, Isaac, and Agricola in Florence (most likely between 1487 and 1495, and not necessarily at the same time). By 1516 he was a priest in Imola, where he wrote his first book, Libri tres de institutione harmonica, translated into Latin by the humanist Giovanni Antonio Flaminio. A contemporary poem by Achille Bocchi praises Aaron for rescuing music ‘from squalor and dismal neglect’. By March 1520 he was a singer in Imola Cathedral and from the next year a chaplain; he was also paid by the city to teach music to those who wished to learn. His career in Imola ended abruptly in June 1522 when he was wounded in a factional uprising and his chapel in the cathedral destroyed (Blackburn, forthcoming). By ...

(d London, 1620). English bookseller and publisher. He was established in London from 1591 and financed several significant musical publications, including John Dowland’s The Third and Last Booke of Songes or Aires, printed by Peter Short in 1603, and Robert Dowland’s A Musicall Banquet, printed by Thomas Snodham in ...

(b ?Aachen; d Cologne, c1528–30). German printer. He came into possession of the Lupus Press in Cologne through marriage to its owner, Ida Grutter, and began publishing in 1512 or 1513. He brought out some 35 works on a variety of subjects before his death. The business was continued by his widow and son-in-law, Laurenz von der Mülen, until his son Johann von Aich was old enough to take it over. Under the latter’s direction some 35 more books were issued from the Lupus Press, the last of them dated 1557.

Arnt von Aich’s main output consists of religious writings, a few of which exhibit Protestant sympathies and may have been printed illegally. In music his fame rests on a single collection, LXXV hubscher Lieder, printed by means of woodblocks. Although like many of Arnt von Aich’s publications it is not dated, the repertory indicates an early date (probably between ...

(b ?1560–70; d ?before 1610). English composer. He referred in the dedication of his Psalmes to the late Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick (died 1589/90) as ‘my good Lord and Master’. Allison is represented by 13 compositions in a set of consort books (dated 1588), from the household of Sir Francis Walsingham. Ten four-part settings by him appeared in Thomas East's Whole Booke of Psalms (RISM 1592⁷), and he contributed a dedicatory poem to Giles Farnaby's Canzonets to Fowre Voyces (1598). In 1599 he published his own Psalmes of David in Meter, giving his London address as Dukes Place, near Aldgate, and describing himself as a ‘gentleman’ and a ‘practitioner’ of music. This print also includes his coat of arms, providing much information about his family. In the same year seven of his instrumental works appeared without attribution in Morley's ...

(fl Venice, 1572–1621). Italian printer. In February 1572 he witnessed a codicil to the will of Girolamo Scotto, in which he is described as a printer, not a bookseller, suggesting that he may have worked in Scotto’s shop in Venice at the time. After a brief attempt in printing music on his own in 1579, he resumed as a partner of Giacomo Vincenti, with whom he printed, between 1583 and 1586, about 80 books. A few were reprints of popular volumes by Arcadelt, Lassus, Marenzio, Palestrina, and Bernardino Lupacchino and Gioan Maria Tasso, but most were first editions of works by some 33 composers, of whom the best known are Asola, Bassano, Caimo, Gioseffo Guami, Marenzio, Stivori and Virchi, as well as anthologies. For their printer’s mark Vincenti & Amadino used a woodcut of a pine-cone, with the motto ‘Aeque bonum atque tutum’. When they began to print separately (from ...

(b Fossano, region of Cuneo, Oct 19, 1545; d Saluzzo, Cuneo, Aug 31, 1604). Italian music editor, composer and possibly writer on music. He was born into a leading aristocratic family of Melle, about 30 km from Fossano. He was educated at home and, from 1559, at Montpellier and then entered Turin University to study medicine, philosophy and rhetoric; he may also have studied music, since five of his 118 submissions for the doctorate were concerned with music. In 1566 he went to Pavia to continue his medical studies. On 29 January 1567 he graduated with outstanding results in arts and medicine from Turin University, and a few months later he was admitted to the university's college of doctors as a supernumerary lecturer. At the end of 1570 he left lecturing to become tutor and physician in the household of Count Madruzzi di Challant. When the count became an ambassador of the Duke of Savoy he accompanied him to Rome, where he arrived on ...

(b ?Venice; flVicenza and Venice, 1562–1604). Italian printer and music publisher. He was possibly related to the Parisian publishers Abel and Arnoul Angelier. He printed books in Venice sporadically from 1562 until 1570, when he apparently acquired the printing shop of Claudio Merulo and began to publish in earnest. His 1571 edition of madrigals by Aurelio Roccia employs the same typefaces and ornamental initials that Merulo had used, and the madrigals were ‘per Claudio Merulo da Correggio con ogni diligenza corretti’. Angelieri's seven other surviving music editions are mostly madrigals and use the printer's mark acquired from Merulo: Arcadelt (1572), Rore (1573), Lassus (two books, 1573), Palestrina (1574). He also printed Alard Du Gaucquier's Magnificat octo tonorum (1574), and Costanzo Porta's Litaniae (1575). Three of the music books name Merulo as ‘correttore’, but Merulo seems not to have had any continuing connection with the firm....

(b Montona [now Motovun], Istria [Croatia], c1480; d after 1538). Italian woodblock cutter, editor, publisher and composer of Croatian birth. His birthplace is frequently appended to his name, as in his papal privilege of 1516: ‘to our beloved son Andreas Antiquus de Montona, cleric of the diocese of Parenzo now living in Rome’. (Despite the reference to clerical status, there is no evidence that he was ordained as a priest or served the church.) Active as a woodblock cutter, editor and music publisher in Rome from 1510 to 1518, in Venice 1520–21 and again from 1533 to 1539, he was the earliest competitor of Ottaviano Petrucci, who had initiated the printing of volumes of polyphonic music at Venice in 1501. Antico was the first to publish such books in Rome.

Antico’s method differed fundamentally from Petrucci’s: Antico was a cutter of woodblocks from which music and text were printed in one impression, whereas Petrucci employed multiple impression from moveable type. Antico both cut the blocks for and published, in collaboration with printers and others, his Roman editions and those of his first two years in Venice. After ...

(b Corato; d Bari, after 1608). Italian composer and anthologist. Antiquis was associated with the basilica of S Nicola, Bari, for most of his career, first as cleric (from 1565), then as canon and choirmaster. From 1606 to 1608 he was chaplain and singing teacher of the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples. His two anthologies of 1574 (dedicated to the banker Daniello Centurione) contain 13 of his own villanellas and 31 by various musicians employed in Bari, among them Pomponio Nenna and Stefano Felis. His villanellas usually open homorhythmically and proceed in lightly imitative textures. Two books of madrigals by Antiquis are listed in the catalogue of the library of Federico Franzini, compiled in 1676 (Mischiati nos.XII:26–7); they do not survive. He also published a number of instrumental bicinia in anthologies.

(b Berching, nr Eichstätt, c1500; d Berne, aut. 1554). German music printer and publisher. He settled in Basle, where he worked as a bookbinder and was given citizenship on 3 April 1527, having been admitted to the Saffran Guild on 10 December 1525. He seems to have been associated with the Reformation at an early stage; he attended the religious debates held in Berne in 1528, and it was possibly at this time that he met the Berne precentor Cosmos Alder. In 1536 he published three four-part songs by Alder, in a book of songs produced jointly with Peter Schoeffer in Strasbourg; in 1553 he also published hymns by Alder. From the middle of 1533 to 1537 he printed numerous Reformation writings (e.g. by W.F. Capito and M. Bucer) in Strasbourg, and he and Schoeffer jointly published works on music theory and practice, their association probably stemming from Apiarius’s thorough knowledge of music and his contact with composers. On ...

(b Cairo Montenotte, nr Savona, Oct 18, 1546; d in or after 1600). Italian music editor. Fétis stated incorrectly that he was born at Novara. He was probably educated at Mondovì, but he spent most of his life in Rome, where he was a member of the Congregazione dell’ Oratorio (founded by Filippo Neri) and a friend and colleague of Giovenale Ancina. His only extant publication, Nuove laudi ariose della Beatissima Virgine scelte da diversi autori (Rome, 1600⁵), for four voices, contains 70 laudi by 26 composers, including Animuccia, Dentice, Giovannelli, Ingegneri, Lassus and Vecchi. All the works are contrafacta of secular pieces for which Arascione provided the sacred texts. According to the four dedicatory letters by Ancina and several sonnets prefacing the volume, it was intended as the second part of Ancina’s Tempio armonico, published the year before (RISM 1599⁶). Like Ancina’s volume it was designed for the use of the Congregazione; the pieces are firmly in the religious tradition of the Philippine ...

(b Grodzisk, nr Poznań, July 26, 1552; d Toruń, Aug 2, 1609). Polish clergyman and hymnbook compiler. He first studied at Grodzisk, was then, from 1573, a private tutor at Ostroróg and in 1577–8 attended the University of Wittenberg. An outstanding Protestant divine, he spent his whole career as a preacher – in Warsaw from 1578, at Wȩgrów from 1581, at Kryłów (in the Małopolska district) from 1584 and at Toruń from 1586 until his death. He was the editor of the most popular Polish Protestant hymnbook, Cantional, albo pieśni duchowne (‘Cantionale, or Spiritual songs’; Toruń, 1587 or ?1578). It was enlarged and reprinted many times as Cantional, to iest pieśni krześcijańskie (‘Cantionale, or Christian songs’) at Toruń in 1596, 1601, 1620, 1638, 1648, 1672 and 1697, at Gdańsk in 1640 and 1646 and at Leipzig as late as 1728. The biggest edition, that of 1601, contains 333 songs, 106 of which were set by Adam Freytag for three to five voices (the number of these settings was reduced in later editions). The melodies were taken from traditional Catholic sources and Czech and German hymnals, and some were native Polish tunes; some of the texts were adapted, presumably by Artomius himself, to fit the traditional melodies....

(b probably in or nr Douai, c1494; d Paris, late 1551 or 1552). French music printer, publisher, bookseller, punchcutter and typecaster.

By a document notarized 13 January 1513/14 Attaingnant, described as a ‘bookseller, living in Paris’, leased a press to Jean de la Roche, reserving the right to print ecclesiastical pardons and the like, should he receive commissions. He may have gone from Douai to Paris originally with a chorister’s scholarship for the Collège de Dainville, which was subject to the cathedral chapters of Arras and Noyon. This institution leased the part of its buildings on the rue de la Harpe to Philippe Pigouchet ( fl 1490–1514), the printer-engraver famous for his Hours and the master to whom Attaingnant was probably apprenticed. Marriage to one of Pigouchet’s daughters, Claude, made Attaingnant his heir. Another of Pigouchet’s daughters, Germaine, was married to Poncet le Preux (...

(b ?Louvain, c1525; d ?Düsseldorf, after 1557). South Netherlandish printer. His publications are important in the history of music printing in the Low Countries. From 1545 to 1551 he worked at Louvain, probably as a university printer. Besides music, he printed mainly official documents and religious commentaries, of which a number were published by M. Rotaire and Phalèse family. During this period he printed the first, third, fourth (and perhaps fifth) of Des chansons reduictz en tablature de lut, which were Phalèse’s first music publications and the first books of lute tablature printed from type in the Low Countries.

By 1554 Baethen was in Maastricht, where his publications included a book of Flemish songs, Dat ierste boeck vanden nievve Duytsche liedekens, one of five such anthologies published in the Low Countries during the 16th century. In 1555 he moved to Düsseldorf, where he published three books of motets, ...

(b Venice; d Ferrara, Feb 21, 1618). Italian printer and engraver. He began to publish literary texts in 1578, setting up his printing works opposite the Castello Estense at Ferrara. He seems to have started music publishing in 1582 with a collection of madrigals for five voices by various authors entitled Il lauro secco, in which a representative group of madrigalists from Ferrara and other Italian cities paid homage to the beauty and virtuosity of Laura Peverara, a singer from Mantua and lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Ferrara. Baldini probably acquired the edition from the heirs of Francesco Rossi and Paolo Tortorino. He later printed many collections of madrigals, canzonettas, psalms and motets by such leading composers as Lodovico Agostini, Girolamo Belli and Bonfilio. Between 1594 and 1597 he published several of the most significant works of the seconda pratica madrigalists (Luzzaschi, Gesualdo, Fontanelli and Macque).

Baldini also published a number of books on the theory and art of music and the theatre, including F. Patrizi’s ...

Member of Ballard family

(b Paris, ?1575–80; d Paris, Oct 4, 1639). French music printer, son of Robert Ballard (i). In partnership with his mother he carried on the business after the death of Le Roy. On 25 March 1607 letters-patent from Henri IV officially made him music printer to the king, and henceforth the editions appeared under his name alone. The privilege was renewed by Louis XIII in 1611 and 1633.

An example of one of the many challenges to the power of the house of Ballard over the years occurred after the musician Nicolas Métru had received a privilege to print music in 1633. Pierre Ballard brought a suit to stop him, and in 1635 the court removed Métru’s privilege in exchange for a commitment from Ballard to publish Métru’s compositions. On 29 April 1637 Louis XIII issued a decree praising the beauty of the notes and characters of Ballard, which ‘far surpass those made in foreign kingdoms and provinces’, confirmed the title of royal music printer and stated that no further privileges to print music would be given without Ballard’s consent. According to Fournier, Ballard must have granted his consent at times, because there is a record of his having sold matrices of music type called Cicero to Guillaume Le Bé (ii)....

Member of Ballard family

(b Montreuil-sur-Mer, ?1525–30; d Paris, bur. July 8, 1588). French music printer. The son of Michel Ballard and Colassé Le Roy, he was the founder, along with his cousin Adrian Le Roy, of the printing firm of Le Roy & Ballard. The first document showing their association, by which Le Roy and Ballard received a privilege for printing music from Henri II, is dated 14 August 1551. On 16 February 1553 the partners received the title of music printers to the king (the title held by Attaingnant until his death in late 1551 or 1552). It was reaffirmed in 1568 under Charles IX and in 1594 under Henri IV and was to continue for other members of the family until the mid-18th century.

On 30 October 1559 Ballard married Lucrèce Dugué, who brought him and the firm valuable connections with the musical and political life of the court. Her father Jean Dugué was organist to the king, and Dugué’s nephew Pierre was attached to the retinue of the king’s brother. Through her mother Perrette Edinthon she was related to Charles Edinthon, lutenist in the king’s chamber from ...

(fl Padua, 1583–7). Italian amateur music editor and composer. He lived at Padua, where the only definite reference to him concerns his loan of a portative organ to the cathedral cappella on 6 December 1583. He edited the important anthology De floridi virtuosi d’Italia (Venice, 1583¹¹), for five voices, which includes works by Marenzio and Giovanni Gabrieli. The dedication, which he addressed to Prince Albert Radziwiłł, provides interesting evidence about musical relations between Italy and Poland. He also published an anthology of pieces by musicians who worked at, or had contact with, Padua, Canzonette di diversi eccellentissimi musici, libro primo (Venice, 1587⁷), for three voices. Alongside pieces by G.B. Mosto, Annibale Padovano, M.A. da Pordenon and Giulio Renaldi appear two canzonettas of his own composition, which with their homophonic textures and simple harmony are typical of canzonettas of the period.

(b 1565; d 1614). English music publisher. His position in the history of music printing in Elizabethan London is a contentious one. In 1596 he produced The Pathway to Musicke and A New Booke of Tabliture, the latter thought to be the book that John Dowland complained of in his The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597), declaring that the versions of his lute pieces were ‘falce and unperfect’. Barley was acquainted with Thomas Morley, and, when Morley acquired a music printing monopoly in 1598, six volumes appeared bearing the imprint ‘imprinted at London, in Little St. Helen's by William Barley, the assigne of Thomas Morley’. An examination of these six works, however, makes it clear that they cannot all have been printed by the same man or on the same press. The most significant of this group are Antony Holborne's Pavans, Galliards, Almains, the first appearance in print in England of music for instruments rather than voices, and Thomas Morley's ...