the first extended use of single-impression printing in
Italy, publishing vast quantities of madrigals as well as
motets, masses, and other liturgical polyphony. For the
mid-century generation of composers such as Nicolaus
Gombert, Jacobus CLEMENS (NON PAPA), and Adrian
WILLAERT, printing took on a greater importance than ever
before in establishing reputations. The process worked
posthumously and conversely as well: the indiscriminate
application of Josquin DES PRÉS’s name to spurious com-
positions in 1530s editions by German printers led to the
remark that “now that Josquin is dead, he is producing
more compositions than when he was alive.” By the end of
the century, the printing of secular works and Latin-texted
sacred music (even in England) was at a high point of ac-
tivity. It was in later periods that economic realities caught
up with the music printing field and stemmed the enor-
mous expansion that marked its first century.
See also: PRINTING
Further reading: Iain Fenlon, Music, Print and Culture
in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy (London: British Library,
1995); A. Hyatt King, Four Hundred Years of Music Printing
(1964; 2nd ed. London: British Library, 1968); Jeremy L.
Smith, Thomas East and Music Publishing in Renaissance
England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
music theory What is now considered “music theory”
includes many different kinds of writing about music and
encompasses both the major elements characterized in
early treatises as musica theorica and musica practica. A di-
vision of music into practical and theoretical elements had
been known in the ancient world, and was taken up again
in the monumental Speculum musice of Jacobus of Liège
(died after 1330), eventually becoming a standard struc-
turing device. The theoretical branch of music consisted
of the mathematical study of ratios, for the construction of
musical intervals and scales, along with speculation con-
cerning the causes, effects, and classifications of music in
the world and the cosmos. For this type of learning, by far
the most influential work throughout the Middle Ages,
and continuing into the 16th century as a basic university
text, was the sixth-century De institutione musica of
Boethius. The 14th-century writings of Johannes de MURIS
would achieve a similarly wide distribution for two cen-
turies, with the Musica speculativa secundum Boetium and
Notitia artis musicae reaching a university audience.
The other side of music theory, musica practica, dealt
mainly with elements of notation and performance. In the
writings of Muris and certain contemporaries, we find a
major development, known as the ARS NOVA, which in-
volved the creation of a new system of rhythmic notation.
Simultaneously, the theorist Marchetto of Padua experi-
mented with new approaches to tuning in polyphony,
introducing controversial theoretical constructs to accom-
modate microtonal divisions of the pitch space. After later
14th-century experimentation with new notational sym-
bols and complexities of rhythmic detail, the major steps
of the 15th century involved formulations to exert closer
control over the interactions of voices in polyphony. The
most significant contribution to the study of music in the
later part of the century was made by Johannes TINCTORIS,
whose writings attempt to cover every aspect of contem-
porary practice in a systematic manner. In the texts of
Tinctoris and major contemporaries such as Franchino
GAFFURIO, the influence of classical rhetorical models af-
fects the style and language of the treatises, particularly in
the increasing attention paid to named composers and the
citations from specific compositions in examples. Never-
theless, the aims and teachings of these books is still
largely traditional, and issues concerning details of music
notation give rise to the theorists’ most heated debates.
The only major British theorist to appear between the later
14th and 16th centuries was John HOTHBY, who spent the
greater part of his career in Italy in the later 15th century.
Hothby was an influence on a number of Italian theorists,mmuussiicc tthheeoorryy 3 33311Music theoryA woodcut from Theorica musicae(1492) by
Franchino Gaffurio, showing experiments to establish the
mathematical relationships between musical intervals.