YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

166 RICHARD FREEDMAN
II, who ruled between 1547 and 1559 – by Guillaume Morlaye, one of the great
lutenist’s pupils and a musical entrepreneur. In a dedicatory epistle to Henri, Morlaye
justified the patent commercialism of the venture by offering lavish praise for French
monarchs – including two of ‘the most noble, virtuous, and magnanimous kings in
Europe’, namely François I and Henri II, who had until now carefully guarded Albert’s
music as a private domain. 16 Prior to Lasso’s royal privilege, it seems, composers had
only a relatively weak and unofficial power to shape how their music appeared in
print.
Elsewhere in Europe, too, composers were only rarely involved in the business
of seeking or receiving a privilege to print their music during the sixteenth century.
When they were, the documents suggest that these particular composers were
enmeshed in the mundane details of commercial partnership. 17 In 1538, for instance,
Constanzo Festa was granted a privilege by Venetian officials protecting his music
from unauthorized publication for a period of ten years. As it happens, only a single
book was ever published under this privilege, in circumstances that suggest Festa’s
powers to have been more narrow than broad: the print in question was issued in
Rome rather than in Venice, and in any event was prominently emblasoned with his
own emblem, suggesting that the print was produced on commission and under his
direct supervision. 18 In 1544 the Roman master Cristóbal de Morales made a contract
with the local printer Valerico Dorico (and a pair of editori) to print a book of his
polyphonic masses. The composer and printer, according to the contract, were to
divide the print run of 525 copies between them. Clearly this was a commercial venture.
19 And in November of 1544, the composer Cipriano de Rore obtained a Venetian
privilege to protect the forthcoming publication of a collection of motets – Motetti
tratti dalla sacra scrittura et musica sopra quelli da lui composta, reads the docu-
16 The dedication reads, in part: Veritablement, Sire, si ce tant excellent Albert se sentant parvenu au
sommet de ce que peut sçavoir un parfaict sonneur de Leut, se fust seulement contenté d’avoir donné
contentement à deux, les plus nobles, vertueux, et magnanimes Roys de l’Europe ... – from the epistle
printed in the Premier livre de tabulature du leut dAlbert [sic] de Rippe, Paris, 1553. Cited in J.-G.
PROD’HOMME, Guillaume Morlaye, éditeur d’Albert de Ripe, luthiste et bourgeois de Paris, in Revue
de musicologie, 6 (1925), pp. 163–164. Albert’s fantasias and his arrangements of courtly chansons
appear in J.-M. VACCARO ed., Oeuvres d’Albert de Rippe, 3 vols., Paris, 1972–1975. The problems
of performing Albert’s music are considered in L. NORDSTROM, Albert de Rippe, joueur de luth du
Roy, in Early Music, 7 (1979), pp. 378–385.
17 For an overview of the situation as it unfolded in Italy, see J. BERNSTEIN, Financial Arrangements
and the Role of the Printer and Composer in Sixteenth-Century Italian Music Printing, in Acta musicologica,
63 (1991), pp. 39–56.
18 Further on Festa’s privilege and its significance, see M.S. LEWIS, Antonio Gardano: Venetian Music
Printer, 1538–1569. A Descriptive Bibliography and Historical Study, 2 vols., New York – London,
1988–1997, 1, p. 673; and J. HAAR, The Libro Primo of Constanzo Festa, in Acta musicologica, 52
(1980), p. 153.
19 Concerning the Morales-Dorico contract, see HAAR, The Libro Primo, p. 154; and S. CUSICK, Valerio
Dorico: Music Printer in Sixteenth-Century Rome, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1981, pp. 152–163. A transcription
of the document of 1544 appears on pages 297–301 of Susan Cusick’s study.