music in venice: a historiographical overview 877
smith and Alessandro pontremoli both use Marin sanudo’s diaries as
major sources for examinations of the role of dance in Venetian theatrical
spectacles in the early 16th century. while sacred music, except for nun-
neries and the orphanages, was a purely male affair, women played a vital
role in secular vocal music, as authors of texts and as performers. recent
studies have shown that some of the Venetian courtesans were famous in
their day as singers as well as poets.
Music PublishingAs discussed elsewhere in this volume, Venice was, by the late 15th cen-
tury, one of europe’s chief centers of printing. while some liturgical books
contained music printed from woodblocks, it was the arrival in the 1490s
of ottaviano petrucci, from Fossombrone in the Marche, that enabled
Venice to become the first and most important renaissance producer
of printed books of music. petrucci obtained a privilege for his method
of printing music from movable type in 1498, and issued his first book,
Harmonice musices Odhecaton A, in 1501. this was followed by some 60
more titles in the next 20 years, published in Venice or in Fossombrone.
petrucci’s name appeared often in early histories of music, but the first
full-length study of the printer, by Anton schmid, was published in Vienna
in 1845. schmid traced petrucci’s career and described those volumes he
could locate (and included also a study of later 16th-century music print-
ers, including the Venetians scotto and gardano, to be discussed below).
several decades later, in 1881, Augusto Vernarecci issued the first italian
book on petrucci, correcting and updating schmid and expanding greatly
the discussion of petrucci’s civic activities in his home town after he left
Venice. the 1940s saw two more important contribitions to the literature
on this first printer of music, an edition and study of the Odhecaton and
a much more complete and accurate bibliography of petrucci’s output,
although without detailed bibliographic information.
Modern bibliographic methodologies were brought to bear on the out-
put of petrucci with the work of stanley Boorman, whose study of the
first edition of the Odhecaton, showing that one of the extant copies in
fact included elements of the second edition, appeared in 1977. in 1995,
Bonnie Blackburn finally solved the vexed question of the identity of the
man named in Odhecaton as its editor, petrus castellanus. she identi-
fied him as a friar at ss. giovanni e paolo, where he served as maestro
di cappella, and she presents arguments regarding his activities and the