Thomas Snodham was an English printer. He was a specialist music printer, but music accounted for as little as 10 per cent of the books he printed. [1] His other output included plays.
Snodham was the son of a draper. In 1595 he was apprenticed to his uncle, the printer Thomas East. East had started as a general printer, but specialised in music printing after acquiring music type from a deceased printer. He printed works by well-known composers such as William Byrd and John Dowland. [2]
Snodham became a freeman of the Stationers Company in 1602. He printed his first book the following year, King James his entertainment at Theobalds, which was sold from East's premises. [3] When East died in 1608, he left a will making clear that he wanted Snodham to take over his business, while at the same time he made provision for the financial security of his widow Lucretia. [4] Snodham acquired East's printing equipment and worked with some of the same composers such as John Wilbye. For a while, the business continued to use the old name, presumably in the expectation of benefiting from goodwill. For example, the second set of Wilbye's 'Madrigals' (1609) is stated to be printed by "Thomas East, alias Snodham".
Snodham died in 1626.
In 1612, Snodham printed the first edition of Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist, which had been premiered in 1610 by the King's Men. The following year he printed the second quarto of Thomas Lord Cromwell .
William Boyce was an English composer and organist. Like Beethoven later on, he became deaf but continued to compose. He knew Handel, Arne, Gluck, Bach, Abel, and a very young Mozart, all of whom respected his work.
William Bradford was an early American colonial printer and publisher in British America. Bradford is best known for establishing the first printing press in the Middle colonies of the Thirteen Colonies, founding the first press in Pennsylvania in 1685 and the first press in New York in 1693. Bradford operated continuously printing establishments for sixty-two years, heading a family that would include printers and publishers for 140 years. He was also known for controversies regarding freedom of the press. Starting his printing career in London, Bradford emigrated to America in 1685. He established, with others, the first paper mill to appear in the Thirteen American Colonies.
John Rastell was an English printer, author, member of parliament, and barrister.
William Caslon I, also known as William Caslon the Elder, was an English typefounder. The distinction and legibility of his type secured him the patronage of the leading printers of the day in England and on the continent. His typefaces transformed English type design and first established an English national typographic style.
The English Madrigal School was the intense flowering of the musical madrigal in England, mostly from 1588 to 1627, along with the composers who produced them. The English madrigals were a cappella, predominantly light in style, and generally began as either copies or direct translations of Italian models. Most were for three to six voices.
John Day was an English Protestant printer. He specialised in printing and distributing Protestant literature and pamphlets, and produced many small-format religious books, such as ABCs, sermons, and translations of psalms. He found fame, however, as the publisher of John Foxe's Actes and Monuments, also known as the Book of Martyrs, the largest and most technologically accomplished book printed in sixteenth-century England.
John Wilbye was an English madrigal composer.
William Jaggard was an Elizabethan and Jacobean printer and publisher, best known for his connection with the texts of William Shakespeare, most notably the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. Jaggard's shop was "at the sign of the Half-Eagle and Key in Barbican."
The Second Book of Songs is a book of songs composed by Renaissance composer John Dowland and published in London in 1600. He dedicated it to Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford.
Thomas Creede was a printer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, rated as "one of the best of his time." Based in London, he conducted his business under the sign of the Catherine Wheel in Thames Street from 1593 to 1600, and under the sign of the Eagle and Child in the Old Exchange from 1600 to 1617. Creede is best known for printing editions of works in English Renaissance drama, especially for ten editions of six Shakespearean plays and three works in the Shakespeare Apocrypha.
Thomas Cotes was a London printer of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, best remembered for printing the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632.
Nicholas Okes was an English printer in London of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, remembered for printing works of English Renaissance drama. He was responsible for early editions of works by many of the playwrights of the period, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, James Shirley, and John Ford.
William Stansby (1572–1638) was a London printer and publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, working under his own name from 1610. One of the most prolific printers of his time, Stansby is best remembered for publishing the landmark first folio collection of the works of Ben Jonson in 1616.
William Barley (1565?–1614) was an English bookseller and publisher. He completed an apprenticeship as a draper in 1587, but was soon working in the London book trade. As a freeman of the Drapers' Company, he was embroiled in a dispute between it and the Stationers' Company over the rights of drapers to function as publishers and booksellers. He found himself in legal tangles throughout his life.
John Windet was an English printer, notable for his music publications. He was a close business associate of fellow printer John Wolfe. After 1591, Wolfe ceased printing the lucrative metrical psalter of Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, and Windet succeeded him in becoming the sole printer of the work for patent-holder Richard Day. At some point, Windet succeeded Wolfe as London's City Printer. Wolfe passed on some of his printing ornaments to Windet after he decided to stop printing and focus solely on publishing in 1594. On Wolfe's death in 1601, Windet was appointed administrator of his estate.
Early music of Britain and Ireland, from the earliest recorded times until the beginnings of the Baroque in the 17th century, was a diverse and rich culture, including sacred and secular music and ranging from the popular to the elite. Each of the major nations of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales retained unique forms of music and of instrumentation, but British music was highly influenced by continental developments, while British composers made an important contribution to many of the major movements in early music in Europe, including the polyphony of the Ars Nova and laid some of the foundations of later national and international classical music. Musicians from the British Isles also developed some distinctive forms of music, including Celtic chant, the Contenance Angloise, the rota, polyphonic votive antiphons, and the carol in the medieval era and English madrigals, lute ayres, and masques in the Renaissance era, which would lead to the development of English language opera at the height of the Baroque in the 18th century.
Thomas Vautrollier or Vautroullier was a French Huguenot refugee who became a printer in England and, briefly, in Scotland.
Thomas East was an English printer who specialised in music. He has been described as a publisher, but that claim is debatable. He nevertheless made an important contribution to musical life in England. He printed the significant madrigal collection, Musica Transalpina, which appeared in 1588.
Handlist of publications of, or about, music printed in England before 1660. If a work is undated the date is italicised. The handlist does not give every detail about the publications but presents an overview of music publishing in England. The 1557 London Charter limited printing to members of the London Company of Stationers and this was strengthened and further enforced in 1566..
The Musical Antiquarian Society was a British society established in 1840. It published, during seven years, 19 volumes of choral music from the 16th and 17th centuries.