Ottaviano Petrucci

Ottaviano Petrucci (18 June 1466 – 7 May 1539) was an Italian printer. His Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, a collection of chansons printed in 1501, is commonly misidentified as the first book of sheet music printed from movable type. Actually, that distinction belongs to the Roman printer Ulrich Han's Missale Romanum of 1476. Nevertheless, Petrucci's later work was extraordinary for the complexity of his white mensural notation and the smallness of his font, and he did in fact print the first book of polyphony using movable type. He also published numerous works by the most highly regarded composers of the Renaissance, including Josquin des Prez and Antoine Brumel.

Life

He was born in Fossombrone (Pesaro), and probably was educated at Urbino. Around 1490 he went to Venice to learn the art of printing, and in 1498 he petitioned the Doge for the exclusive right to print music for the next 20 years. The right was very probably granted, since no examples of printed music from other Venetian printers are known before 1520. In 1501 he produced his first book of music, 96 chansons, as the Harmonice musices odhecaton A (sometimes referred to as "the Odhecaton"), which is the earliest known example of printed polyphonic music. In the following years he continued to refine his technique, producing new editions and reprints every few months until 1509, when his activity was interrupted by the war of the League of Cambrai against Venice; he departed the city for Fossombrone, where he resumed his activities as a printer.