Across more than three decades of scholarly contributions, Jane Bernstein has fundamentally shaped our knowledge of music printing in sixteenth-century Italy. Her monumental 1998 study of the Scotto Press in Venice explores one of the most prolific printing houses in Renaissance Europe, offering previously unknown details about the technological, social, and economic factors that drove the dissemination of music in Cinquecento Italy.1 Throughout her career, Bernstein has revealed the impact of financial networks and patronage systems on the music-printing industry. In doing so, she has helped scholars of sixteenth-century music build on and surpass the familiar and important catalogs of printed music editions that today grace the shelves of nearly every academic music library.
Printing Music in Renaissance Rome turns to a far more heterogeneous printing environment. Rather than focus on a single printing house, Bernstein takes a bird’s-eye view of the printing industry in a city of central...