Harmonice Musices Odhecaton: Petrucci’s printed music & early Renaissance music in Italy (1480-1500)

To skip to another track, click on the time stamp: 0:00 Bergerette savoyenne (Josquin des Prez) 3:30 Comment peult (Josquin des Prez) 5:35 Je nay dueil (Alexander Agricola) 8:45 Brunette (Johannes de Stokem) 10:24 Rompeltier (Jacob Obrecht) 11:18 Tandernaken (Jacob Obrecht) 14:04 Tous les regres (Pierre de la Rue) 15:47 A la audienche (van Ghizeghem) 18:06 In te Domine, speravi (Josquin des Prez) 20:56 E la la la (Ninot le Petit) 22:20 La stagetta (Gaspar van Weerbecke) Ottaviano Petrucci is remembered as the first large scale publisher of printed music in Europe. He had reconfigured Gutenberg’s movable type technology to accommodate musical notation with the intent to mass produce multi-volume part books. His meticulously indexed compilation of secular music was titled Harmonice Musices Odhecaton (Canti A, B and C). It gave future generations of performers and musicologists straightforward, legible copies of more than 200 masterpieces by some of the greatest composers of his generation. Some scholars believe that the the Odhecaton was intended for use by instrumentalists given the absence of lyrics beneath the lines of musical notation. Afterall, Petrucci knew very well how to match words of a song to their corresponding notes. For example, the Josquin piece “In te Domine, speravi,“ from a different Petrucci compilcation “Frottole Libro Primo“ does include the lyrics associated with the melody (see example). For the soundtrack in this video, I selected representative works principally by Netherlanders: Josquin Desprez, Jacob Obrecht, Pierre de la Rue, Gerard Weerbecke and others. Like other videos on my Youtube channel, all the musical clips are MIDI files downloaded from different websites. I edited each MIDI file to emulate the sound and feel of a period performance. The raw MIDI files were downloaded from Aeolian Consort’s website on and edited using the iPhone app MusicStudio2. Nearly all the pieces are transposed down an octave from the Aeolian Consort 4’ recorder arrangements. Most of the artwork featured in this video comes from the period between 1470 and 1510. A handful are products of early 15th century artists. They can be roughly divided into 4 categories: 1. Facsimile printed scores from Petrucci’s 1503 and 1504 editions of Harmonice Musices Odhecaton Canti A and Canti B. 2. Portraits of the composers (Desprez, Obrecht and de la Rue) as well as of their patron Duke Ercole I of Ferrara and his daughter Isabella d’Este. 3. Large scale Italian Renaissance paintings and frescos containing iconography of angels (and people) playing instruments that were current in the late 15th century. 4. Late 15th century illuminated manuscripts from France and Burgundy containing scenes of nobles dancing or otherwise enjoying a live musical performance.