The Mechanisms of the Music Trade in Central Germany, 1600–40

Abstract

One of the main challenges facing early printers and publishers of music was how to distribute their products to a dispersed, niche market. At the start of the seventeenth century there were two principal routes of dissemination in German-speaking lands: the general book trade (including the fairs at Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig) and the composer's own initiatives (whether via presentation copies, or via self-publication as pursued by Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein and Heinrich Schütz). This article traces the transactions by which music was disseminated, examines the range of music available through the book trade, and asks how booksellers and musicians negotiated the market for printed music.