Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on German-speaking lands, where editors had a profound impact on the transmission and reception of Italian secular song in the decades around 1600. The authors approach music anthologies as social artifacts that reflect the needs and motivations of their producers and consumers. In the cases of music books, they can consider multiple groups within these two categories. Editors collaborated, directly or indirectly, with composers, printers, and publishers to bring music to the public. The central sources for such a study remain the music books themselves, the final products of editorial work. The approach to these sources draws much from the field of manuscript studies. The study of individual scribes and scriptoria presents a striking parallel to the printed anthology compiler and print shop.