Early Music Printing in Salamanca, 1494-1512

Abstract

From 1494 until 1512, around a dozen securely datable prints containing or relating to music were published in the city of Salamanca in present-day Spain. To date, these works have not been considered as a group. This thesis takes the perspective of the Salmantine printers to examine this corpus. To do so, the study gathers methods and secondary sources from a variety of fields, particularly combining history of the Iberian book with musicology. The thesis establishes Juan de Porras as the dominant printer in Salmantine music printing production with prominent connections to the Fonseca family, particularly the Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Alfonso II de Fonseca. Music production was also motivated by liturgical reforms sweeping across the Peninsula, as well as related language reforms occurring at the University of Salamanca. While liturgical prints had pre-established markets and patrons, marketing techniques in the music treatises show that these works were targeted to different segments of Iberian society. The thesis includes three appendices which 1) collate all identifiable persons in the prints, 2) present a catalogue of Salmantine music prints from 1494 to 1512, and 3) compare music types used in the liturgical books of the corpus.