Printers, sellers, buyers and the need for a network in 17th- and 18th-century Bologna

The essay deals with Italian printed music of the 17th and 18th centuries and its network of printers, sellers and buyers. It examines a variety of sources, manuscripts and printed scores, contemporary catalogues, account books, private papers and letters, as well as documents related to individuals, institutions and guilds. The chapter focuses on Bologna, included in the commercial network that linked several Italian and European centres during the early modern era. It is part of a volume devoted to ‘Translatio musicae’, with different chapters on the circulation of music in early modern Europe, focusing on the Baroque period (c. 1600–1750). “Translation” is a central key concept for the volume, as used in the early, equivocal sense, referring both to transferring as displacement and to translation as adaptation, modification or reworking. Translation describes both the displacement of music and its adaptations for new uses and purposes at its new location. The various chapters present a wide range of themes and topics with no geographical bias, apart from Europe, dealing with circulation between distant parts of the Continent, but also within one and the same region or city. The chapters share a particular interest in the processes of how French and Italian music was translated to Northern Europe.