Early Music Printing and Publishing in the Iberian World (review)

The importance of music printing from the earliest years of its inception cannot be overestimated, not least because of its role in facilitating the circulation of vocal and instrumental repertories to reach a wider international clientele. Until recent years, musicological interest has on the whole been almost entirely focused on the contributions of Italian, German, French, and other northern European printers and publishers, with relative neglect of the Spanish and Portuguese. This is undoubtedly very largely due to the simple fact that contributions in music publishing in the Iberian Peninsula have been quite small, beginning later, and in its earliest days consisting only of music treatises and instrumental tablatures, apart from liturgical books. Printing presses in the Iberian Peninsula are therefore not associated with the runs of small printed partbooks of vocal music produced in Italy and northern Europe during the sixteenth century, although these books were eagerly collected in Spain and Portugal. The first print of vocal polyphony issued in Spain that we know of appeared only in 1551; the first in Portugal only in 1609. Scholars (Spanish in particular) have, however, paid a great deal of attention to the Spanish instrumental books in tablature issued in print (from the mid-1530s onwards), and it has been suggested that this interest was partly inspired by the fact that the printers of these books were nationals, contrasting with an apparent neglect, until now, of the vocal polyphonic books produced by immigrant northern European publishers in Spain (from about the 1580s). The published works of Spanish composers of vocal polyphony of a more international stature produced both in Italy and in Spain, in contrast—notably the music of Morales, Guerrero, and Victoria—have all attracted serious scholarly attention in the wake of the pioneering work of Felipe Pedrell and Higinio Anglés.

In whichever ways these situations may be accounted for today, it is nevertheless true to say that the Iberian Peninsula has gradually been emerging from its sometimes perceived 'peripheral' status to one of singular interest, promise, and importance—both as a musicological 'field' to be further explored, and as the origin of a substantial repertory of vocal polyphony that, in a large number of manuscript and printed collections, is still waiting to be tried in performance. The increasing numbers of international scholars dedicated to research in Iberian music today are making important inroads into reappraising and reassessing material that has only partially been interpreted until now, in addition to making important new discoveries that have served to enhance contextual and cultural awareness. In turn, this is leading to increased numbers of collaborative projects on aspects of Spanish and Portuguese musical history, resulting in published books with different authors presenting different perspectives and viewpoints. Among recent collaborative publications, for example, are Aspectos de la cultura musical en la Corte de Felipe II (Madrid, 2000), edited by Luis Robledo Estaire, Tess Knighton, Cristina Bordas Ibañez, and Juan José Carreras; Políticas y prácticas musicales en el mundo de Felipe II: Estudios sobre la música en España, sus instituciones y sus territorios en la segunda mitad del siglo XVI, edited by John Griffiths and Juan Suárez-Pajares (Madrid, 2004); The Royal Chapel in the Time of the Habsburgs: Music and Court Ceremony in Early Modern Europe, edited by Juan José Carreras and Bernardo García García (Madrid, 2001; this English edition by Tess Knighton, 2005); and Devotional Music in the Iberian World, 1450-1800: The Villancico and Related Genres, edited by Tess Knighton and Álvaro Torrente (Aldershot, 2007).

The collection of ten articles forming the present book arose from a one-day seminar that took place in Cambridge in 2001, organized under the auspices of a research project directed by Fenlon and funded by the Leverhulme Foundation: Music, print and culture in Spain and Portugal during the Renaissance, 1474-1621. The chapters are ordered alphabetically by author...