ABSTRACT
Together with music by Nasco, Morales and Ruffo, for the printing of which the prolific Antonio Gardano was granted a licence, it included a theoretical work that was to earn the reputation of being the summa of 16th-century musical knowledge. The privilege for the printing and sale of the volume was conferred on the author himself: Gioseffo Zarlino da Chioggia, priest, musician and eclectic scholar, who eight years later was raised to the prestigious position of maestro M cappella at St. Mark's Basilica. The very next year the Italian edition of the Istitutioni barmoniche was issued by a Venetian printer whose name is omitted on the tide-page, a fact suggesting that Zarlino intended to assert full ownership of the 'fruit of his work and toil'. In conformity with a procedure inherited from humanistic tradition, his work also acts as a systematic 'digest' of passages on music from a wide variety of classical and modern works.
