Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that Your Best Provision for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which there are no Better in the World . Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot...

This book presents a varied and nuanced analysis of the dynamics of the printing, publication, and trade of music in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries across Western and Northern Europe. Chapters consider dimensions of music printing in Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy, showing how this area of inquiry can engage a wide range of cultural, historical and theoretical issues. From the economic consequences of the international book trade to the history of women music printers, the contributors explore the nuances of the interrelation between...