Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
During Purcell's lifetime the music-publishing business in England flourished, thanks mainly to John Playford. Since intellectual property rights did not yet exist, Playford and his successors were able to select music they were confident of selling, predominantly producing multicomposer anthologies of popular tunes. Composers may have benefited little from these publications so it is significant that some took the financial risk of printing their music without an established publisher's support. Analysis suggests that musical self-publication was undertaken for several quite specific purposes. Three self-published books stand out as the only operatic scores published in seventeenth-century England: Locke's The English Opera (1675), Grabu's Albion and Albanius (1687), and Purcell's The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess (1691). These substantial volumes had no obvious practical use and all sold poorly; put into political context, however, they reveal how printed music in England was developing from a purely practical performance tool into a medium through which statements could be made and musical works given monumental status. Yet Purcell's own management of the printing of The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess suggests that he was confused about the distinct and mutually exclusive functions of music printing in the period, which led him to misunderstand the nature of the market and how he might appropriate the medium for his own benefit.
During Purcell's lifetime the music-publishing business in England flourished, thanks mainly to John Playford. Since intellectual property rights did not yet exist, Playford and his successors were able to select music they were confident of selling, predominantly producing multicomposer anthologies of popular tunes. Composers may have benefited little from these publications so it is significant that some took the financial risk of printing their music without an established publisher's support. Analysis suggests that musical self-publication was undertaken for several quite specific purposes. Three self-published books stand out as the only operatic scores published in seventeenth-century England: Locke's The English Opera (1675), Grabu's Albion and Albanius (1687), and Purcell's The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess (1691). These substantial volumes had no obvious practical use and all sold poorly; put into political context, however, they reveal how printed music in England was developing from a purely practical performance tool into a medium through which statements could be made and musical works given monumental status. Yet Purcell's own management of the printing of The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess suggests that he was confused about the distinct and mutually exclusive functions of music printing in the period, which led him to misunderstand the nature of the market and how he might appropriate the medium for his own benefit.
In 1989, at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, John Eliot Gardiner conducted and recorded Claudio Monteverdi’s Marian Vespers, published in 1610. Despite the print’s dedication to Pope Paul V, the three-year gap between the print being issued and Monteverdi taking up the post of maestro di cappella at St Mark’s and the considerable stylistic diversity of the pieces contained in that print, Gardiner considers Monteverdi’s Vespers as one coherent whole, for which the Venetian basilica was the target venue. Gardiner’s project has undoubtedly played a major role in how present-day audiences conceive of the 1610 Vespers. It has thus made a permanent mark on contemporary musical culture, as evidenced by the numerous reissues of the 1989 album and, most of all, productions by other musicians that associate the 1610 Vespers with St Mark’s. This article discusses the concept of ‘Monteverdi’s Vespers’ as represented in contemporary record releases of the composer’s works. This concept refers both to Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, published in 1610, and to various modern compilations of his works which musicians, musicologists and producers refer to as ‘Vespers’. The great wealth of Vespers-related pieces held in libraries and archives still considerably outweighs the number of performances and recordings of those works. Monteverdi’s Vespers, on the other hand, make up the majority of existing recordings of seventeenth-century polyphonic Vespers and thus constitute a key point of reference. I analyse around 500 albums (not only with Vespers music) released between 1952 and 2019, focussing on their iconographic and typographic content, as well as their graphic designs, in an attempt to show how the modern vision of this repertoire came to be formed and what persons and places are associated with this current in the history of early music recording.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.