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Pierre Attaingnant

Cole Hankins
MUS 4800
November 20, 2014

An important development in the humanist leanings of Renaissance-era music was the mass production of
printed music. Doubtlessly, one of the most important figures in the field of music publishing was Pierre
Attaingnant (1494-1551). By the time of his death, he had published several books of motets, chansons,
lute pieces, four part dances, and keyboard dances (transcriptions from the four part dances). While it is
unknown whether or not Attaingnant had a great degree of musical training, many of these collections
bear his name exclusively, and therefore are formally credited to him for purposes since.
Attaingnants lasting contribution was economizing the printing of music. Under Ottaviano
Petruccis method of printing (one of the first to use a movable type), the staff lines and notes would be
printed in different impressions, taking 2 to 3 impressions total. For this reason, Petruccis quartos were
very costly to purchase.1 Attaingnants method used types containing both the staff lines and notes,
allowing for an entire page to be reproduced in a single impression. While an artifact of this process was a
less perfect, bumpy appearance of the staff, this would reduce costs by nearly half and presented a costeffective printing technique that would be adopted internationally for the approximately the next two
hundred years.
A notable aspect of Attaingnants collections is the printing of instrumental arrangements of
previously published music. This is prevalent in his volumes for lute and keyboard. These instrumental
works bring forward many questions of possible authors and editors.
Some of the pieces, those with the initials P.B., are thought to have been composed by
Pierre Blondeau, a Parisian musician who may have also edited these books for
Attaingnant (who is not himself known to have been a lutenist).2
It could be assumed then that some of Attaingnants editors were various musicians local to him.
However, it is believed that Attaingnant himself developed a new method of lute tablature, beginning the
precedent of using lower-case letters, as opposed to the numbers used in German tablature. These

Guillo, Laurent, and Heartz, Daniel, Attaingnant, Pierre, In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/01479?q=Pierre+attaingnant+&search=quick&source=omo_g
mo&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit (accessed November 19, 2014).
2

Richard Long, Renaissance Lute Music for the Guitar: Pierre Attaingnant, Soundboard: The Journal of the Guitar
Foundation of America 32, no. 3 (2007): 49-55.

collections also mark a shift pointing towards the popular dance suites of the Baroque era. While
Arbeaus Orchesography lists these dances independently, Attaingnant groups many together, all in the
same key. His cycles of Basse-dance, Recoupe, and Tourdion, are the earliest extant examples of dances
related by common tonality rather than thematic continuity.3
Attaingnant was given the title imprimeur et libraire du Roy en musique by Francis I in 1537.
This endorsement follows the assertion that Francis I was supportive of new French compositions, and
precipitates the national style of the Baroque-era under Louis XIV. Attaingnants publications held very
little music that was dated, and with his volumes selling hundreds of copies (a shockingly high figure for
the day), this new music was markedly popular, possibly even on an international scale. Attaingnants
publications were very practical, economical to produce, and innovative, allowing for Renaissance-era
Europe to propel itself forward into further musical development.

Douglas Alton Smith, A History of the Lute: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (Canada: The Lute Society of America, Inc.,
2002), 196-98.

Bibliography
Arbeau, Thoinot. Orchesography. 1948. Rev. ed. Edited by Julia Sutton. Translated by Mary Stewart
Evans. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967.
Attaingnant, Pierre. Danseries a 4 Parties: Second Livre, 1547. Edited by Raymond Meylan. Le Pupitre
9. Paris: Heugel, n.d.
Brown, Howard Mayer, ed. Instrumental Music Printed Before 1600: A Bibliography. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1965. 28-29 and 31-40.
Guillo, Laurent, and Heartz, Daniel. Attaingnant, Pierre. In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/01479?q=Pierre+attaingnant+&search
=quick&source=omo_gmo&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit (accessed November 19, 2014).
Heartz, Daniel, ed. Keyboard Dances from the Earlier Sixteenth Century. Corpus of Early Keyboard
Music 8. N.p.: American Institute of Musicology, 1965.
Heartz, Daniel. Pierre Attaingnant: Royal Printer of Music: a Historical Study and Bibliographical
Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
Heartz, Daniel. Preludes, Chansons and Dances for Lute (Published by Pierre Attaingnant, Paris (15291530). Neuilly-Sur-Seine: Societe de Musique D'Autrefois, 1965.
Long, Richard M. Renaissance Lute Music for the Guitar: Pierre Attaingnant. Soundboard: The Journal
of the Guitar Foundation of America. 32, no. 3-4 (2007): 49-55.
Munrow, David. Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 1976. Reprint, London: Oxford
University Press, 1980.
Seaton, Douglass. Ideas and Styles in the Western Musical Tradition. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010.
Smith, Douglas Alton. A History of the Lute: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. Canada: The Lute
Society of America, Inc., 2002.

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