YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

WHO OWNED LASSO’S CHANSONS?
ment. The set was issued by the firm of Antonio Gardano in 1545, and then promptly
reprinted in an unauthorized (and unsigned) edition by Rore’s old print partner
Girolamo Scotto, later that same year. 20 Such practices as these put Lasso’s new authorial
privilege into sharp relief: no other Renaissance composer had ever been offered
so sweeping an official voice in the control of his creative work. Even in the literary
world the notion of authorial privilege was exceedingly rare during the sixteenth century.
Among Lasso’s contemporaries, only Pierre de Ronsard had the legal right –
sanctioned by royal patent – to control how his works were published. Ronsard’s
privilege of 1554 probably served as a model for the one granted Lasso (see Appendix,
Document 6). 21
Like Ronsard’s privilege, Lasso’s French patent is both retrospective and
prospective, covering works already written and published as well as ones still to
emerge from the pen. Such ‘general’ privileges had the risk of colliding with ones
already issued to printers, as they did in the case of the Imperial decree, as we have
seen in the case noted above. What is especially interesting about these patents is that
they pass over in all but silence the question of monetary compensation for creative
work and instead stress an author’s right to determine how his works would appear
in public. It would seem to modern readers self-evident, perhaps, that published versions
of a work ought to reflect an author’s best intentions for it. But the text of
Ronsard’s privilege strongly suggests that such fidelity had an ‘ethical’ dimension
that touched on broader concerns, too. Recall for that matter the passage on the negative
effects of inaccurate texts: here we learn that the faithful attention to Ronsard’s
texts, which so ably emulate the subtlety, seriousness, sweetness and grace of classical
models, will in time lead to a general renovation of the French language itself.
20 The Gardano motet book is described in LEWIS, Antonio Gardano: Venetian Music Printer, 1, pp.
483–497 [No. 73]. The Scotto print is described in J. BERNSTEIN, Music Printing in Renaissance
Venice: The Scotto Press (1539–1572), New York – Oxford, 1998, pp. 326–328 [No. 52]. Further on
Rore’s privilege, see R.J. AGEE, The Venetian Privilege and Music-Printing in the Sixteenth Century,
in Early Music History, 3 (1983), p. 29. The document in question is transcribed in R.J. AGEE, The
Privilege and Venetian Music Printing in the Sixteenth Century, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1982,
p. 214.
21 Granted by King Henri II on 4 January 1554 (new style), Ronsard’s authorial privilege was first used
in conjunction with De La Porte’s edition of the Bocage from November of that year. The same privilege
is cited in several other editions of major works by Ronsard, issued by various publishers, during
the 1550s. The authorial privilege was renewed by Henri II on 23 February 1559, and again by his successor
François II on 20 September 1560. For a complete transcription of the privilege of 1554, see
Pierre de RONSARD, Oeuvres complètes, ed. P. LAUMONIER, 18 vols., Paris, 1921–1967, 6, pp. 3–5.
Other privileges for Ronsard’s works are listed in P. LAUMONIER, Tableau chronologique des oeuvres
de Ronsard suivi de poésies non recueillies et d’une table alphabetique, 2nd ed., Paris, 1911. Even
the prolific essayist and humanist Michel de Montaigne was bound by a conception of property rights
in which printers, not authors, were understood to ‘own’ published works. For a subtle assessment of
the French privilege system and its economic incentives for authorial revision and renewal, see
G. HOFFMANN, The Montaigne Monopoly: Revising the ‘Essais’under the French Privilege System,
in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 108 (1993), pp. 308–319.
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