(April 22nd, 2016) The sixteenth century was marked by innovations and great development. The first printed collections of polyphonic music date back to the beginning of that century. At the time Venice was an important music center composed by Venetian and Franco-Flemish musicians, and provided by a repertoire consisting in frottola, madrigals and instrumental compositions for organ and lute. The style and the polychoral compositions of the Venetian School influenced the European music of the sixteenth century. The music publishing contributed to the retrieval and distribution of music. “The press, the music and the Italian language in Venice during the Renaissance. A system of privileges” is the title of the conference, sponsored by the Italian Institute of Culture in Munich, together with the cultural association Forum Italian e.V. . Paola Zuccarini – President of Forum Italian e.V. – is holding the conference at the IIC on Wednesday, April 27th, from 18 to 19.30. During the event the figures of the publishers Ottaviano Petrucci and Andrea Antico will be examined in depth. They were known for having perfected the existing printing procedures, adopting high parameters for the artistic quality of the drafting, the visual design, and impression of music. Those procedures allow them to produce a very elegant result, similar to the manuscripts. To protect their works and printing techniques from counterfeits and imitations they took advantage of the legal institute of the preemption. This legal tool had an fundamental role in the evolution of the whole publishing sector since 1469, when it was granted for the first time by the Venetian government to the German printer Johann of Speyer for the publication of “Epistulae ad familiares” by Cicero. (Red)
