Music and music printing in incunabula by Kinkeldey Otto 1878-1966

Author:Kinkeldey, Otto, 1878-1966
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Music in incunabula, Music printing
Published: 1932-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

in the church of the fifteenth century as it is today. Even the words of the offices were not as uniformly fixed as they were later. Each larger ecclesiastical center or diocese had its own peculiar "use" for parts of the service. The monastic establishments departed from the official form to an even greater extent. In the matter of musical melodies, the special "uses" varied still more. In the interest of a wider sale some printers preferred to omit printed melodies from their publications. One difficulty with these printed books in which manuscript addij tions were made was that the paper chosen for its printing qualities, its proper reaction to printer's ink, did not always so readily take the ink used on a pen. This disadvantage, added to the irregularity of written notes, inevitably led craftsmen who looked to the artistic effect of their handiwork to seek a satisfactory method of complete music printing.

The difficulties of music-type printing were set forth in our discussion of the theory books. The liturgical printers, however, had an advantage over other book printers in that they had early resorted to the practice of producing a book by a double impression for the sake of two colors. They utilized this fact to secure a complete musical addition to their liturgical text. Once the problem of the long red lines of the printed staff were solved, it required only a little more ingenuity and accurate adjustment to utilize the black printing for placing note forms exactly where they belonged on the lines and spaces of the red staff. Whether the red lines were printed first and the black printing followed, or vice versa, was immaterial. The liturgical printers also had an advantage over other music printers in that the liturgical melodies were all comparatively simple as against the contrapuntal choral music. Liturgical music notation is not deeply concerned with the rhythmic problem, and by simplifying the style and the system of notation used in the liturgical manuscripts the printers were able to re-

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