ABSTRACT
In the three volumes of this study, I have documented as closely as possible the output of Antonio Gardano's press, and the location of the surviving copies. More difficult to ascertain, however, is the nature of the market for his books, and the various ways the public approached the acquisition of printed music. In this chapter, I will examine the buying and collecting habits of some of the owners of Gardano's publications, and at the manner in which buyers and collectors obtained his prints, formed them into collections, and preserved them, particularly in so-called binder's copies, collections of printed books bound together under one cover in a single volume. We can only infer from the surviving books the distribution of the music Gardano printed, as well as the tastes and purchasing patterns of the owners of his prints. I distinguish here between buyers and collectors, identifying the former as being more casual in their approach to obtaining music books, while the latter went about their purchasing in a more systematic, and often more comprehensive, way. Both types of consumers, however, tended to bring their books together at some point within single bindings, the better to preserve and organize them. These bound-together volumes, binder's copies, are among our best tools for tracing habits of consumption of Gardano's music books.
