Editing Music in Early Modern Germany

Editing Music in Early Modern Germany argues that editors played a critical role in the transmission and reception of Italian music outside Italy. Like their counterparts in the world of classical learning, Renaissance music editors translated texts and reworked settings from Venetian publications, adapting them to the needs of northern audiences. Their role is most evident in the emergence of the anthology as the primary vehicle for the distribution of madrigals outside Italy. The book suggests that music editors defined the appropriation of Italian music through the same processes of adaptation, transformation and domestication evident in the broader reception of Italy north of the Alps. Through these studies, Susan Lewis Hammond's work reassesses the importance of northern Europe in the history of the madrigal and its printing.