Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance England (review)

The names of Scotto, Gardano, Petrucci, and Attaingnant comprise a roll-call of some of the most eminent figures in the early development of music printing. What sets them apart from Thomas East is that they (and some others) have been the subject of inspirational studies carried out during the last thirty-five years by a succession of dedicated bibliographers. To that august list can now be added the name of Thomas East, the foremost English music printer of the Elizabethan period, a major study of whose work has long been overdue.

East's relative neglect at the hands of music historians is perhaps understandable, since not even at its best does his work rival in elegance the music prints of Petrucci and some others. One explanation for this is that East's use of the 'single-impression' process, whereby each side of a folio sheet passed through the press only once (as opposed to three times in the work of Petrucci), frequently results in the unsatisfactory registration of leger lines. A more likely justification for East's sidelining is quite simply that his letter and music fonts, even in his early work, lack the crisp definition and graceful proportions that characterize those used by most of his Continental counterparts. East's lack of appeal to general bibliographers is understandable too, since the printing of music constituted only a very small proportion—usually between 2 per cent and 10 per cent—of the overall printing activities of a typical Elizabethan music printer. This is certainly true of East, who worked as a trade printer for well over two decades before publishing a note of music.

In this keenly awaited study Jeremy L. Smith expands on previously published work in two areas in which he has already forged an enviable reputation: first, a study of the chronology of East's music prints as established by an analysis of paper, watermarks, and type deterioration (see Notes, 53 (1997), 1059–91); and second, an examination of the politics of the music printing monopoly, William Byrd's role within that monopoly, and the complex personal and business relationship between the composer and East (see Music & Letters, 80 (1999), 511–30).

Both fields of study have attracted attention from previous scholars. Donald Krummel (among others) has dealt at some length with the music patents, and in three articles published in the 1960s H. K. Andrews and Peter Clulow resorted to typographical evidence to establish accurate datings for the various editions of Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets & Songs (1588) and his three Latin masses. So reliable was the methodology used by Andrews and Clulow that most of their conclusions (including the fact that East's use of the barred semicircle mensuration sign for music in duple time served to date an edition as being post-1594) have remained unchallenged by subsequent research.

Smith's principal findings are the result of a detailed examination of the paper stocks used by East. This examination confirms Allan Stevenson's assumption that, since paper represented by far his major expense, a printer would have purchased only the minimum necessary for the immediate task in hand, and that the supply would have been exhausted relatively quickly. Most significantly, Smith shows that, for a dozen of East's music prints whose title pages carry nominal dates between 1588 and 1600, East later produced what the author describes as 'hidden' editions, that is editions which bear the original date and which so closely imitate the appearance of the original edition that it can confidently be assumed that East intended to deceive customers into believing that they were purchasing the original edition. In some cases the hidden edition(s) appeared very shortly after the original edition, as with Byrd's Psalmes, Sonets & Songs, the original edition and the two hidden editions of which all date from 1588–9.

Arguably the most interesting collection to have been subjected to such cloning was Wilbye's...