Music, Authorship, and the Book in the First Century of Print

What do we mean when we identify a composer as the creator of a piece of music? Does a printed piece of music embody the work, even if the composer is not the person who puts the work on paper? In this fascinating cultural history of Western music’s adaptation to print, Kate Van Orden looks at how the concept of musical authorship took root. When music was first printed in the early Renaissance, the composer was not always involved in publication; printers attached famous composers’ names to publications that might include little or none of their music in order to sell more copies. Even when composers saw an economic advantage to having their work in print, many resisted the new modes of commercial dissemination. Van Orden addresses the complex questions that arose when a composers began to confront the cultural and economic influence of printing and publication of music, leading to surprising conclusions around identity, ownership, and economic interests and roles.

Kate van Orden is Professor of Music at Harvard University and author of Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago, 2005), winner of the Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society.