Press, Plate & Pixel: A History of Music Score Printing and Engraving

I · The Incunabula Period 1450–1500

Movable Type

Gutenberg's Printing Press, Mainz

Johannes Gutenberg develops movable metal type cast in a durable alloy, an oil-based ink adhesive to metal, and a screw press adapted from wine-presses. The system allows 250 sheets per hour — a revolution in information production.

Ref: Febvre & Martin, The Coming of the Book (1976); Britannica, "Johannes Gutenberg"

c. 1450

1452–55

First Major Printed Book

The Gutenberg Bible (42-Line Bible)

Approximately 180 copies printed on paper and vellum in Mainz. The first substantial book produced by movable type in Europe; some copies were hand-rubricated in red and blue. Widely regarded as the most important book in Western printing history.

Ref: Ing, Johann Gutenberg and His Bible (1990); Library of Congress collection

First Music Printing

Mainz Psalter — First Printed Music

Printed by Gutenberg's successors Fust & Schöffer. The first printed book to include music: staff lines were printed but notes still added by hand. The first attempt to integrate music into the printed page.

Ref: HOASM, "Early Music Printing"; History of Music Publishing, Wikipedia

1457

Spread of the Press

Printing spreads across Europe

Within 20 years of Gutenberg's Bible, presses are operating in Italy (1465), France (1470), the Netherlands, Spain, and England (1476). By 1500, over 200 cities in Europe have printing presses and some 20 million books have been produced.

Ref: Jensen (ed.), Incunabula and Their Readers (2003)

1465–1500

1476

First English Printer

Caxton's Canterbury Tales, Westminster

William Caxton sets up England's first press at Westminster and prints Chaucer's Canterbury Tales — the first substantial book printed in England. Around 600 copies produced; only a handful survive. Caxton prints over 100 titles, helping standardise English spelling and promote the vernacular.

Ref: Painter, William Caxton: A Quincentenary Biography (1977); British Library, Treasures in Full

Intaglio Printing — Maps & Art

Copper-plate Engraving Established for Maps and Fine Art

Emerging from the workshop practices of Florentine goldsmiths in the 1430s — who discovered that ink-filled incisions in metal could be transferred to paper — copper-plate intaglio printing rapidly matured as a graphic art in the hands of masters such as Martin Schongauer and, later, Albrecht Dürer. Its first major cartographic application came in 1472, when two Italian editions of Ptolemy's Geography were illustrated with copper-engraved maps in Rome. Because the incised plate could hold far finer lines than a carved woodblock, and could be corrected and re-used indefinitely, engraving swiftly became the preferred method for maps, portraits, and scientific illustration. By the mid-16th century it dominated European cartography. This same capacity for precision and fluency — impossible with movable type — would eventually make copper-plate engraving the standard means of music printing, displacing music type entirely by the early 17th century.

Ref: Copper.org, "60 Centuries of Copper: Copper Engraving Plates"; Woodward (ed.), Five Centuries of Map Printing (1975); University of Virginia, "Copperplate Engraving"; Academia.edu, "From Paper to Print: The Material Origins and Rise of Copperplate Engraving in 15th Century Europe"

c. 1472–1500

II · Renaissance & Reformation 1500–1600

Music Typography

Petrucci's Triple-Impression Music Type

Ottaviano Petrucci, Venice, prints Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A — the first book of polyphonic music printed entirely from movable type, using a labour-intensive three-pass system for staves, notes, and words.

Ref: History of Music Publishing, Wikipedia; HOASM, "Early Music Printing"

1501

Music Printing

Single-Impression Music Type (Attaingnant)

Pierre Attaingnant, Paris, pioneers single-impression music type: staff, notes, and text cast into a single piece of type. Much faster than Petrucci's method, this becomes the dominant system for printed music for over a century.

Ref: History of Music Publishing, Wikipedia

c. 1528

1575

Music Copyright

Tallis & Byrd — First Music Monopoly

Elizabeth I grants Thomas Tallis and William Byrd a 21-year patent monopoly on the printing and publishing of polyphonic music in England — one of the earliest formal music copyrights. Their Cantiones Sacrae (1575) is the first publication under the privilege.

Ref: History of Music Publishing, Wikipedia

First Music Engraving

Copper-plate Engraving Applied to Music — Rome

The application of copper-plate intaglio to music printing began in Italy in the second half of the 16th century, with the first datable, surviving collection printed entirely from engraved plates being Simone Verovio's Diletto spirituale (Rome, 1586). Engraving could achieve what movable type could not: beaming, complex rhythmic groupings, tablature, and the flowing curves of vocal lines. Within a generation it would displace type throughout Europe as the primary medium for music publication.

Ref: van Lookeren Campagne, Simone Verovio: Music Printing, Intabulations and Basso Continuo in Rome around 1600 (2018); Brown, Instrumental Music Printed before 1600 (1965); HOASM, "Music Printing in Britain Through 1695"

1586

First Engraved Music Print

Verovio — Diletto spirituale, Rome

Simone Verovio's Diletto spirituale: canzonette a tre et a quattro voci (Rome, 1586) is the earliest datable collection of music printed entirely from copper-plate engravings. Verovio — a Flemish scribe and engraver working in the papal court — engraved and printed it himself, as stated on the title page: Intagliate et Stampate dal medesimo. The collection contains canzonettas by Palestrina, Marenzio, Anerio, and others, each accompanied by intabulations for harpsichord and lute — a format that demanded the flowing lines and precise spacing only engraving could provide. Verovio published at least thirteen music prints and several writing manuals between 1586 and 1607, establishing the engraved music print as a prestigious art object in Rome. An undated lute tablature, the Intabolatura da Leuto attributed to Francesco da Milano (A-Wn SA.76.D.54; Brown 154?4), is sometimes cited as a possible earlier precursor, but carries no date or printer's mark and survives in a single copy.

Ref: van Lookeren Campagne, Simone Verovio (2018); Library of Congress, "Diletto spirituale" (RISM BI/1586/2); Brown, Instrumental Music Printed before 1600 (1965); British Library, Early Music Online

III · The Seventeenth Century 1600–1700

c. 1612–13

Landmark Engraved Music — England

Parthenia — Byrd, Bull & Gibbons (William Hole, engraver)

Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls — 21 pieces by William Byrd, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons, engraved on copper plates by William Hole and printed in London — is the first printed collection of keyboard music in England. Engraved music printing had reached England somewhat earlier: Orlando Gibbons's Fantazies of III. Parts, also engraved by Hole, is thought to date from c.1606–10 and is probably the first engraved music printed in England. But Parthenia, prepared for the betrothal of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was the work that established the form: lavishly produced, widely circulated, and reprinted from the same original plates in 1613, 1635, 1650, and 1659. It demonstrated that intaglio plate printing — already proven for maps and fine art — could serve keyboard music in a way that movable type never could, and set the precedent that would make engraving the dominant means of music publication throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

Ref: Wikipedia, "Parthenia (music)"; HOASM, "Music Printing in Britain Through 1695"; Oxford Reference, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, "Parthenia"; Early English Books Online (University of Michigan), STC 4252; Rimbault (ed.), Parthenia (Musical Antiquarian Society, 1847)

Intaglio Engraving

Copper-plate Engraving Dominates Music

Copper-plate engraving gradually overtakes movable type for music printing from the early 17th century onward. Engravers work in mirror image, punching or scribing notation directly onto copper — capable of far greater beauty and rhythmic flexibility than type.

Ref: Public Domain Review, "Music Manuscripts in the British Library"; History of Music Publishing, Wikipedia

1623

Literary Landmark

Shakespeare's First Folio

Registered 8 November 1623; printed by Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount. Collects 36 plays; preserves 18 works otherwise unknown. Around 750 copies were printed; 235 survive. The most important single volume in English literature, produced on a wooden screw-press little changed since Gutenberg.

Ref: Wikipedia, "First Folio"; Folger Shakespeare Library; Rasmussen & West (eds.), Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue (2012)

IV · Baroque & Enlightenment 1700–1800

1726–31

Landmark Music Publication

Bach's Clavier-Übung I (Partitas), Leipzig

J. S. Bach publishes his six keyboard partitas individually from 1726 to 1730, then reissues them collectively in 1731 as Clavier-Übung, Op. 1 — the first major keyboard collection he supervised through publication. Engraved on copper plates by his Leipzig students; Bach sold copies at the Leipzig trade fair.

Ref: Wikipedia, "List of Bach compositions printed during his lifetime"; Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (2000)

Printing Technology

Lithography Invented — Senefelder

Bavarian playwright Alois Senefelder discovers lithography (stone printing) using the chemical repulsion of grease and water. His first commercial publications are music scores — 12 Neue Lieder fürs Klavier by Franz Gleißner (1796). Lithography will revolutionise cheap music printing and eventually lead to offset printing.

Ref: Senefelder, A Complete Course of Lithography (1819); Britannica, "Lithography"; History of Information, historyofinformation.com

1796

V · The Nineteenth Century — Industrialisation of Print 1800–1900

Steam Printing

Koenig Steam-Powered Cylinder Press

Friedrich Koenig's steam-driven press, first used by The Times of London in 1814, produces 1,100 sheets per hour — more than four times faster than a hand press. This ushers in the age of industrial printing and mass-market publishing. By the 1820s, improved models reach 2,400 impressions per hour.

Ref: Britannica, "Printing Press"; High Point University LibGuide, "History of the Book"

1800–14

Music Publishing

Bureau de Musique / C. F. Peters Founded

Hoffmeister & Kühnel open their "Bureau de Musique" in Leipzig, 1800. Their earliest publications include Haydn and Mozart quartets and the first collected edition of J. S. Bach's keyboard works (14 vols., 1801–03) — one of the earliest scholarly "complete edition" projects. The firm is acquired by C. F. Peters in 1814.

Ref: Edition Peters company history, wisemusicclassical.com; IMSLP, "Edition Peters"

Lithographic Press for Music

Friedländer, Röder & the Rotary Press Revolution, Leipzig

The price revolution in music publishing rested on a sequence of innovations. Julius Friedländer, who acquired Peters in 1860, patented a speed press for music printing in 1861 — the first documented step toward high-speed music printing. Carl Gottlieb Röder, a Leipzig printer-engraver trained at Breitkopf & Härtel, adapted a Sigl flatbed litho press for music printing in 1863, running engraved zinc plates at substantially higher speeds than hand-press methods. The fully rotary stage — mounting the zinc plate on a cylinder — may have come later, possibly driven by the collaboration between Röder and Abraham after 1867, when Peters' commercial scale provided the incentive to push further. Output across this period leapt from 30 sheets per hour in 1860 to 300 by 1865. It was Dr Max Abraham who drew these developments together, commissioning Röder as Peters' printer from 1867 and making the Edition Peters series viable at one-fifth competitors' prices.

Ref: Lawford-Hinrichsen, Music Publishing and Patronage: C. F. Peters, 1800 to the Holocaust (Edition Press, 2000) — source for Friedländer's 1861 patent; IMSLP, "C.G. Röder" (citing New Grove and Schmidt, Deutsche Buchdrucker, 1908) — source for Röder's 1863 lithographic adaptation; Edition Peters company history (Wise Music Classical)

1863–67

Mass-Market Music Publishing

Edition Peters Series Launched, Leipzig

Combining Friedländer's lithographic press innovations at Peters with Röder's new rotary technology, Dr Max Abraham launches the "Edition Peters" series in 1867, beginning with Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier edited by Czerny. The scores were still engraved on copper by Röder's craftsmen — over 1,000 engravers at the firm's peak — but reproduced at industrial speed. The green-covered editions sold at one-fifth the price of any competitor, giving a wider public than ever before the chance to buy, rather than hire, printed music. Abraham openly shared the technology: Breitkopf & Härtel adopted the same process for their concurrent Volksausgabe series. In 1933 Peters issued the first Urtext edition (Bach's Two-Part Inventions, ed. Landshoff).

Ref: Edition Peters company history (Wise Music Classical); IMSLP, "Edition Peters" and "C.G. Röder"; Pizzicato, 2018

VI · The Twentieth Century — Phototypesetting & Offset 1900–1980

Offset Printing

Offset Lithography Adopted for Paper

Building on earlier patents, practical offset printing on paper is developed in the US shortly after 1900. An inked image transfers from plate to rubber blanket to paper — allowing sharp, consistent reproduction on almost any surface. Within a generation, offset replaces letterpress as the dominant commercial printing method. For music, offset transformed production by separating the preparation of camera-ready copy from the printing itself. Even publishers using traditional plate engraving adopted this route: a sharp paper pull from the engraved plate was photographed to produce a film negative, from which the lithographic plate was made. For new music, publishers prepared masters in black ink on transparent drafting film — either fully by hand using Rapidograph pens on pre-ruled transparent staff paper, or via Notaset, a dry-transfer symbol system adopted by major publishers from the early 1960s. In either case the master was photographed, typically with a reduction that sharpened the image, before exposure onto the zinc plate.

Ref: Britannica, "Lithography"; Wikipedia, "History of Printing"; Wikipedia, "Music Engraving"; MakeMusic/Finale, "Life Before Finale — Notaset" (2013); Scoring Notes, "Daniel Spreadbury on music fonts" (2020)

c. 1910–90

Computer Music Printing

Leland Smith — First Computer-Typeset Musical Work

Leland Smith at Stanford produces the first complete musical work set entirely by computer: his Six Bagatelles for Piano (December 1971), output on a CalComp plotter. His Woodwind Trio (1973) is praised as equivalent to "the finest examples of contemporary music printing." In 1979 he publishes the first book on music typeset entirely by computer.

Ref: Scoring Notes, "Leland Smith dies at 88" (2013); Wikipedia, "SCORE (software)"; Stanford CCRMA documentation

1971–79

Desktop Publishing

Apple Macintosh, PostScript & Aldus PageMaker

The Apple Macintosh (1984), Adobe PostScript (1984), and Aldus PageMaker bring professional-grade layout and laser printing to the desktop. The combination of WYSIWYG design, scalable fonts, and PostScript output democratises book and document production — a revolution comparable to Gutenberg's.

Ref: Britannica, "Printing Press"; Wikipedia, "Desktop Publishing"

1984

VII · The Digital Age of Music Notation Software 1986–present

Notation Software

SCORE — Leland Smith (Stanford)

SCORE (developed from 1967, released commercially for MS-DOS 1986) becomes the first notation software adopted by major music publishers. Written in FORTRAN, it uses a graphical, page-oriented model akin to PostScript. Its unrivalled output quality — indistinguishable from hand engraving — wins Paul Revere engraving awards and makes it the standard tool for professional music engravers through the 1990s.

Ref: Wikipedia, "SCORE (software)"; Scoring Notes, "Leland Smith" obit; Stanford CCRMA, SCORE documentation

1986

Notation Software

Finale — Coda Music Technologies

Finale (1988), created by Phil Farrand and John Borowicz, is the first notation program to combine a graphical Macintosh interface with sophisticated automatic engraving tools: beaming, spacing, part extraction. By the 1990s it dominates professional commercial engraving in the United States. Discontinued in August 2024 after 35 years.

Ref: CDM, "Finale Discontinued" (2024); Wikipedia, "Scorewriter"; Scoring Notes

1988

Notation Software

Sibelius — Ben & Jonathan Finn (Cambridge)

Developed from 1986 by twin brothers Jonathan and Ben Finn (entirely in assembly language), first released commercially for Acorn computers in April 1993. Dominates the UK market immediately; Windows release (1998) makes it a global rival to Finale. Acquired by Avid 2006; its original development team controversially dismissed in 2012.

Ref: Wikipedia, "Sibelius (scorewriter)"; Scoring Notes; Ben Trigg Music (2021)

1993

First Sibelius-Engraved Publication

George Benjamin, Antara — Faber Music

The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, copied by engraver Richard Emsley and published by Faber Music. Benjamin's work — for ensemble with live electronics incorporating Andean panpipe-derived microtones — was a landmark of the computer-music era, and its publication marked Sibelius's immediate uptake by professional engravers from the moment of release.

Ref: Wikipedia, "Sibelius (scorewriter)" — "The first score published using Sibelius was Antara by George Benjamin, also copied by Emsley, and published by Faber Music."

Notation Software

LilyPond — Han-Wen Nienhuys & Jan Nieuwenhuizen

LilyPond (first release 1996, stable 2.0 in 2004) takes a radically different approach to music notation: rather than an interactive GUI, it operates as a text-based compiler, accepting a plain-text input file and rendering publication-quality output. Its design philosophy — heavily influenced by the traditions of hand engraving — prioritises optical spacing, precise placement, and the kind of fine typographic judgement that GUI programs typically automate away. The results are widely regarded as among the most beautiful produced by any notation software. Freely available under the GNU General Public Licence, LilyPond has become the tool of choice for scholars, publishers, and engravers for whom output quality takes precedence over ease of entry, and its engraving engine underlies several other notation tools including Frescobaldi and the web-based Hacklily.

Ref: lilypond.org; Wikipedia, "LilyPond"

1996

Notation Software

MuseScore — Open Source

MuseScore (first release 2002; widely adopted from c. 2008) provides a free, open-source alternative with capabilities approaching Finale and Sibelius. It implements the SMuFL standard and MusicXML for interoperability. By the 2020s it is the world's most widely used notation program, particularly in education.

Ref: Wikipedia, "Scorewriter"; Scoring Notes, "A Brief History of Music Notation on Computers"

2002–

2020

Landmark Score — SCORE Edition

Ives, Symphony No. 4 — Critical Performing Edition (Brodhead)

The Fourth Symphony's publication history spans the full arc of 20th-century music printing. Composed between 1910 and the mid-1920s, the work received its world premiere on 26 April 1965 at Carnegie Hall under Stokowski — yet the hastily prepared "blue score" issued by Associated Music Publishers was, by its editors' own admission, provisional: a patchwork of hand-copying and Cowell-era plate engraving, with parts that contained no cues for players. The Critical Performing Edition, realised and engraved using SCORE by Thomas M. Brodhead, was premiered at the Lucerne Festival on 26 August 2012 and published by Associated Music Publishers in 2020 (revised 2024). It addresses every quantifiable performance problem in the symphony's notoriously complex notation — polymetrics, quarter-tones, and the multi-conductor logistics of the Comedy movement — and stands as a landmark of what SCORE-based engraving could achieve at the limits of orchestral complexity.

Ref: Wise Music Classical, "Symphony No. 4 — performance edition" (wisemusicclassical.com); Wikipedia, "Symphony No. 4 (Ives)"; ives-fourth-symphony.com (Thomas M. Brodhead); Associated Music Publishers / Hal Leonard, ISBN 978-1-5400-8505-4 (pub. March 2020)

Notation Software

Dorico — Steinberg / ex-Sibelius Team

After the dismissal of the Sibelius team in 2012, Steinberg hired most former developers to build a next-generation scorewriter from scratch. Dorico was first released 19 October 2016. Named after Valerio Dorico (c. 1500–1565), a Renaissance music engraver. Following Finale's discontinuation in 2024, Dorico and Sibelius stand as the two leading professional platforms.

Ref: Wikipedia, "Dorico"; Dorico FAQ blog; Scoring Notes product guide

2016

End of an Era

Finale Discontinued — MakeMusic

In August 2024, MakeMusic discontinues Finale after 35 years, citing the incompatibility of its legacy codebase with modern operating systems. President Greg Dell'Era nominates Dorico as "the new future of the industry." The closure marks the effective end of the first generation of commercial music notation software.

Ref: CDM, "Finale music notation software discontinued" (August 2024); Scoring Notes

2024

Select Bibliography & Sources

Rimbault, Edward F. (ed.). Parthenia, or The Maydenhead of the First Musicke that ever was Printed for the Virginalls. London: Musical Antiquarian Society, 1847. — Standard 19th-century edition with introduction; notes the 1611 original copper-plate engraving by William Hole and subsequent impressions of 1613, 1635, 1650, and 1659.

Woodward, David (ed.). Five Centuries of Map Printing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. — Essays on the transition from woodblock to copperplate engraving in cartography; source for copper's dominance by the mid-16th century.

Febvre, Lucien & Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800. Trans. David Gerard. London: Verso, 1997 [orig. 1958]. — The foundational study of the print revolution.

Ing, Janet. Johann Gutenberg and His Bible. 2nd ed. New York: Typophiles, 1990. — Concise account of Gutenberg's press and Bible.

Jensen, Kristian (ed.). Incunabula and Their Readers. London: British Library, 2003. — Essays on the first century of printed books.

Painter, George D. William Caxton: A Quincentenary Biography. New York: Putnam, 1977. — Complete biography of England's first printer.

Rasmussen, Eric & Anthony James West (eds.). The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Senefelder, Alois. A Complete Course of Lithography. London, 1819. — Inventor's own account of lithography, 1796–1817.

Wolff, Christoph. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. New York: Norton, 2000. — Includes discussion of Bach's printed publications.

Tomita, Yo. "J. S. Bach: Clavier-Übung I." Queen's University Belfast [online resource]. — Prepublication history of Bach's first engraved keyboard collection.

Edition Peters. "Company History." Wise Music Classical [wisemusicclassical.com]. — Authoritative corporate history from 1800 to present.

Selfridge-Field, Eleanor. "Leland Smith (1925–2013)." Computer Music Journal 38/2 (Summer 2014): 5–7. doi:10.1162/COMJ_e_00246. — Obituary and assessment of SCORE's founder.

Smith, Leland. "SCORE — A Musician's Approach to Computer Music." Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 20/1 (1972): 7–14. — Smith's own account of SCORE's origins at Stanford.

Smith, Leland. "Editing and Printing Music by Computer." Journal of Music Theory 17/2 (1973): 292–309. — Early publication on computerised notation.

Scoring Notes. "A Brief History of Music Notation on Computers." scoringnotes.com, 2022. — Overview from Mockingbird (1980) through SCORE, Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico.

Scoring Notes. "Leland Smith, creator of SCORE, dies at 88." scoringnotes.com, December 2013. — Obituary with tributes from engravers Bill Holab and Thomas Brodhead.

Wikipedia. "History of Printing"; "History of Music Publishing"; "Scorewriter"; "Sibelius (scorewriter)"; "Dorico"; "Edition Peters"; "First Folio"; "Lithography". — Cross-referenced throughout; individual articles carry full citations.

Brodhead, Thomas M. (ed.). Symphony No. 4: Critical Performing Edition. Charles Ives. Associated Music Publishers / Hal Leonard, 2020 (revised 2024). ISBN 978-1-5400-8505-4. — Engraved using SCORE; premiered Lucerne Festival, 26 August 2012.

Brodhead, Thomas M. "The New Ives 4th Edition." ives-fourth-symphony.com. — Complete front matter and editorial notes for the Critical Performing Edition, including feedback from twelve ensembles (2012–2017).

Faber Music. "Antara" catalogue entry (ISBN 0-571-51071-X). fabermusic.com. — Publisher's note and instrumentation for George Benjamin's Antara (1987).

Lawford-Hinrichsen, Irene. Music Publishing and Patronage: C. F. Peters, 1800 to the Holocaust. Kenton: Edition Press, 2000. — Family history drawing on the Peters archive; source for Friedländer's 1861 patent for a speed press for music printing.

CDM Create Digital Music. "Finale music notation software discontinued; devs embrace Dorico." cdm.link, August 2024.

Jessica Duchen / JDCMB. "Going green: happy anniversary to Edition Peters!" jessicamusic.blogspot.com, November 2017. — Interview with Peters director Linda Hirst; primary source for Abraham sharing the rotary press technology with Breitkopf & Härtel.

Wikipedia. "Edition Peters." — Names Röder as the printer whose improvements Abraham employed; confirms 1867 launch and competition with Breitkopf & Härtel Volksausgabe.

HOASM (History of Art and Music Studies). "Music Printing in Britain Through 1695." hoasm.org. — Chronological account of engraved music printing in Britain, including the Gibbons Fantazies (c.1606–10) as the probable first engraved English music work, and the cluster of William Hole engravings around 1612–14.

HOASM (History of Art and Music Studies). "Early Music Printing." hoasm.org. — Detailed account of Petrucci, Attaingnant, and early music typography.

Britannica. Articles on "Johannes Gutenberg"; "William Caxton"; "Printing Press"; "Lithography"; "Photocomposition." britannica.com.

van Lookeren Campagne, Leontine. Simone Verovio: Music Printing, Intabulations and Basso Continuo in Rome around 1600. Vienna: Böhlau, 2018. ISBN 978-3-205-20506-7. — The definitive scholarly study of Verovio's output and the origins of copper-plate music printing.

Brown, Howard Mayer. Instrumental Music Printed before 1600: A Bibliography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. — Foundational reference including the undated Intabolatura da Leuto (Francesco da Milano), catalogued as Brown 154?4.

Library of Congress / British Library. "Diletto spirituale: canzonette a tre et a quattro voci." RISM BI/1586/2. loc.gov; bl.uk (Early Music Online). — Bibliographic record and digitised score of Verovio's 1586 print.