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Dissertation Information for Mary Kay Duggan

NAME:
- Mary Kay Duggan
- (Alias) Mary Kay Conyers Duggan

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Berkeley (USA) (1981)

ADVISORS:
- Frederic J. Mosher

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- [Indecipherable1]
- Robert D. Harlan
- Daniel Leonard Heartz

MPACT Status: Complete - Except Indecipherables

Title: ITALIAN MUSIC INCUNABULA: PRINTERS AND TYPEFONTS

Abstract: Fifteenth-century music printers in Italy are listed and specimens of their music types illustrated for the first time in this study of all known Italian music incunabula. Previous accounts of early music printing attributing to Petrucci and his sixteenth-century books the technical innovations that allowed the printing of music in movable type must be revised to acknowledge that such techniques were mastered by the first printers of music. Music incunabula are defined as those fifteenth-century books containing printed notes and staves, printed staves, printed notes, or blank spaces for the insertion of manuscript music. Identification of 163 Italian music books was made after personal inspection of hundreds of books in Europe and the United States and examination of catalogues of collections, nearly doubling the number listed in the best previous account. In-scale photographs of selected pages of the books allowed the preparation of provisional type specimens of each of thirty-seven fonts of metal movable type.

A chapter on the manuscript music book at the transition from the written to the printed book defines the types of liturgical and nonliturgical books that are likely to contain music. The three plainchant and two mensural notations that were in use in manuscript books and were cut into type in Italy in the fifteenth century are illustrated. What is known of manuscript liquescent or ornamental neumes in the fifteenth century is reviewed and illustrated in preparation for the discussion of such neumes in metal type.

The technical aspects of making movable metal music type and setting it in formes are reviewed with reference to sixteenth-century music typefounders, extant sixteenth-century music types, and the first printed description of music type by Fournier. A hypothesis for the physical shape of incunable music type is illustrated by a photograph of a newly-discovered displaced piece of music type accidentally impressed on its side in a music incunabulum. If the hypothesis is correct, the system of multiple body sizes for music type evident in Plantin's sixteenth-century fonts was already operative in fifteenth-century Italy. New importance is attributed to the professional music typefounder in Venice. The significant role of Jacomo Ungaro, now acknowledged as the designer of Petrucci's mensural type and a Venetian resident from 1473, must be added to the history of incunable music types.

Several techniques of printing music staves are discussed in a separate chapter that includes a list of books printed with staves and without notes. A hypothesis for the production of such books by printers owning music typefonts attributes the anomaly to the need for different music notations in certain geographical regions. As a basic tool for music printing historians a map has been provided that defines provisional boundaries for the use of Roman, Ambrosian, Gothic, and Byzantine plainchant notation as suggested by fifteenth-century plainchant manuscripts and paleographical studies. The existence of some editions in copies with printed staves and in copies with printed staves and notes can be explained by a music printer's adding printed notes to other printers' books.

Statistics on the quantity of music books produced by each printer and the relative importance by decade of Italian cities in that production support the conclusions of the final chapter. Rome, site of the first printed Italian music by Ulrich Han in 1476, ceded its importance to Milan, but by the 1480s Venice had assumed the dominant role, finally responsible for nearly half of all Italian music incunabula.

Part II of the dissertation includes type specimens of each font of music type together with a list and short description of those Italian music incunabula printed with the fonts. A biographical sketch of each printer associated with the font includes any information on his ability as a type designer and punch cutter.

MPACT Scores for Mary Kay Duggan

A = 4
C = 3
A+C = 7
T = 14
G = 3
W = 9
TD = 8.75
TA = 2
calculated 2008-05-30 12:39:09

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