Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)
www.copyrighthistory.org
Identifier: s_1559a

Commentary on “Privilege for printing music for the Indies (1559)”

José Bellido (Birkbeck College, University of London)

Raquel Xalabarder (Universidad Oberta de Catalunya)

Ramón Casas Valles (Universidad de Barcelona)

 
Please cite as:
Bellido, J., Xalabarder, R. & Casas Valles, R. (2011) ‘Commentary on Privilege for music-printing to the Indies (1559)', in Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org

1.          Full Title

2.         Abstract

3.         Textual Adventures       

4.         Privileged Positions  

5.         Colonial Privileges 

6.         Privilege for printing music for the Indies

7.         References

1.          Full Title

Privilegio para imprimir libros de música para las Indias  (1559)       

 2.         Abstract

Book privileges also crossed the Atlantic Ocean to reach the New World in the sixteenth century. This commentary describes some of their trajectories and the ways in which Spanish colonial policies led to an increase in the granting of privileges for the book trade in the Indies. It reveals that colonial book privileges were produced by specific agencies and circulated through their own singular routes.

 3.         Textual Adventures  

Perhaps the most attractive feature of Leonard’s Books of the Brave is the description of the journey to the New World as providing a route for the circulation of fiction books, in spite of legal prohibitions and religious petitions.[1] Focusing on seamen as readers and narrating their voyages as alongside the emergence of literary markets, Irving A. Leonard (1896-1962) challenged the tendency to study the regulation of the book trade between metropolis and colonies without questioning the movement of literature throughout official and unofficial routes that united and constituted the Spanish Empire. Furthermore, Leonard disputed claims that the Catholic Monarchs’ attempts to ban popular and fantastic literature from being shipped to the Indies were successful.[2] The maritime route was not only a carrera but also an adventurous and entertaining place to read, live and dream about books. The law forbidding popular and fantasy books was not effective.[3] Because of this, the first significant market of readers to emerge as a result of the discovery of the Americas was made up of those enticed by the adventure of journeying to the Indies. This explains why booksellers and printers in the Iberian Peninsula suddenly began amending their businesses in order to attract overseas readers by publishing specific types of literary products such as chivalric novels.[4]

Interestingly, reading was not the only literary experience of the transatlantic journey that royal and ecclesiastical households attempted to control. Writing about the Indies rapidly became a cause for concern. Not only were religious works surveyed, but colonial tensions and conquerors’ deliriums meant that distinctions and classifications between works of fact and fiction would resurface. Roughly speaking, the creation and circulation of informational works were increasingly at the centre of Spanish regulatory measures.[5] Historical chronicles, maps and navigational charts became particularly sensitive (and useful) material for the colonial enterprise.[6] In contrast to the overlooking of irregularities and the degree of indifference demonstrated by the main colonial authorities towards the circulation of fiction, for informational items, a system of direct surveillance and resolute assessment prior to the granting of printing privileges was developed.[7]

 3.         Privileged Positions  

If there was anyone who knew the tastes of the colonial reading public well and the way to overcome bureaucratic technicalities in order to reach and to stimulate this new public, it was Jacobo Cromberger or Jácome Alemán (1472-1535), a German bookseller and fine printer, who was the founder of one of the most famous printing dynasties in Spain.[8] He was an “enterprising publisher”,[9]  who had already obtained printing privileges in the Kingdom of Castile.[10]  Several years later, a twist of fate put him in a privileged situation.[11] The discovery of the new continent placed his workshop in an ideal position to acquire vital bureaucratic knowledge and to conquer this distant public.[12] He was based in the chief printing centre receiving book orders for the New World: Seville.[13] For both booksellers and readers, this town was the gateway to the colonial market.[14] It was the place in which colonial agencies such as the Council of the Indies (Consejo de Indias) and the House of Trade (Casa de Contratación) had established their headquarters.[15]

While different book merchants in Seville and other parts of Spain initiated contacts with the transatlantic market via mailing lists, dispatches to members of religious orders about to embark and printing on-demand,[16] the Crombergers pioneered several strategies to secure the commercial viability of the colonial book trade.[17] In doing so, they managed privileges and contracts in a very particular way.[18] They simultaneously combined the lobbying for printing colonial exclusivities with the development of networks of agents abroad. On July 25, 1525, Jacobo Cromberger was given a special privilege for trade with the Indies.[19] It was not exactly a printing privilege but a privilege for the exportation of books.[20] For a foreigner like him, this was a precious grant that could be translated into an exclusive right to sell books in New Spain (Mexico). Moreover, the enterprising spirit of the Crombergers’ publishing house did not end there. As distant, but exclusive, suppliers of books to the colonial market, they took different steps to increase their business connections with the Americas.[21] Not only did they appoint agents to help them to acquire printing privileges granted by colonial authorities such as the viceroy and archbishop of Mexico;[22] several years later, Jacobo’s son, Juan Cromberger (d. 1540), would also manage to establish a printing press in Mexico.[23]

 4.         Colonial Privileges

Applications for book privileges for the Indies were frequently directed to the main colonial agency (the Council of the Indies). The Council had been appointed by royal decree in 1556, as the privilege-granting authority of books destined for the Indies.[24] Despite efforts from the Council of the Indies to centralise the system and to make the law effective, it has been suggested that many printers and peninsular authorities overlooked the regulation,[25] exporting and printing books without the colonial agency’s concession but with privileges for the Indies which had been granted by other authorities. With the arrival of the printing press in the Americas, the possibility to request a privilege also appeared. In fact, there are several reports of authorities in the colonies (e.g. viceroys) granting book privileges.[26]

 Nonetheless, both in the metropolis and in the colonies, it is interesting to note that a very particular range of interests was reflected in the colonial privilege repertoire. Of all the colonial book privileges granted, the most precious subject matter for applicants was undoubtedly the right to print indulgences for the Indies.[27] However, there were other printed resources which were equally desirable. Translated and tailored for missionary tasks, educational works (ABCs, first-readings, manuals or cartillas and catechisms) rapidly became the second most important material eagerly petitioned by the printers and booksellers who focused their business on the overseas trade.[28] As instruments of the colonial enterprise, these works were consistently demanded, used and consumed.[29] It is therefore not a surprise that a publishing house as astute as the Crombergers obtained a five-year privilege to print the Cartilla y doctrina en lengua de indios de Michoacán in 1538.[30] Konrad Haebler (1857-1946) once suggested that the difficulty of translating these works into the Nahuatl language was the main reason behind the Crombergers’ decision to establish an office in Mexico.[31] However, the patterns of conquest and missionary objectives may also explain the fierce competition that arose around requests for colonial privileges for devotional and religious literature.[32] If there was a reliable and stable demand for literature, it was in this genre, which was tightly controlled by religious orders travelling to the New World. [33]

Literature, didactic manuals and religious books were not the only productions to travel to the New World.[34] Indeed, musical instruments and music books also made the same journey.[35] There is, in fact, a connection between the demand for religious literature, educational works and the success of plainsong and polyphonic music books.[36] While reading and writing attracted the regulatory and everyday activities of the colonial enterprise,[37] singing and the circulation of textual resources upon which this activity was learnt and performed were also the focus of attention from Spanish authorities since they constituted an important aspect of missionary tasks. As the musicologist Robert M. Stevenson has noted, “[t]he Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians always made music a principal subject in the schools which they set up wherever they were sent to evangelize the Indian”.[38]

If music facilitated the process of religious conversion and was frequently played in places such as colonial cathedrals,[39] music printing exclusivities rapidly attracted book merchants and printers such as the Crombergers, who were engaged in transatlantic commercial adventures.[40] It also caused some writers of music and composers to apply for colonial privileges.[41] Among the privileges granted for music printing, we can include a ten year concession given to Alonso Pérez, a clergyman from a prominent Spanish printing area (Medina del Campo).[42] In his petition to the Council of the Indies, he defined himself as a writer of “missals” (mass books) and requested a twenty year privilege for the publishing of chant books in Peru and New Spain.[43] Although the application and privilege granted are interesting per se, because they reveal the discretion of the Council in reducing the term of the privilege to ten years, the main reason for including this case is based on the performance and applicability of the concession. A remarkable conflict over this specific privilege and the right to print music books to be sent to the Indies arose between this applicant and the well-known printer Francisco Fernández de Córdoba in 1559.[44] A commentary on this litigation is found in the following entry: s_1559b.

 7.         References

Calvo, H. “The Politics of Print. The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America” Book History, vol. 6, 2003, pp. 277-305

Castañeda, C. Imprenta, impresores y periódicos en Guadalajara, 1793-1811 (Guadalajara, México, Museo del Periodismo y las Artes Gráficas-Ed. Ágata-Ayuntamiento-Ágata Editores, 1999)

Collantes de Terán, F. “Un taller alemán de imprenta en Sevilla en el siglo XV” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1931, pp. 145-165.

Delgado Casado, J. Diccionario de impresores españoles, siglos XV-XVII, 2 vols. (Madrid: Arco-Libros, 1996)

De los Reyes Gómez, F. El Libro en España y América. Legislación y Censura (siglos XV-XVIII) (Madrid, Arco Libros, 2000)

Escudero y Perosso, F. Tipografía hispalense: anales bibliográficos de la ciudad de Sevilla desde el establecimiento de la imprenta hasta fines del siglo XVIII   (Madrid, Imprenta de Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1894)

Garone Gravier, M. “¿Ornamentos tipográficos? Las mujeres en el mundo del libro antiguo. Algunas noticias biobibliográficas” in García, I. & Rueda Ramírez, P. (comps) Leer en tiempos de colonia  (México, UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010) pp. 163-214;

Gembero-Ustárroz, M. “Circulación de libros de música entre España y América (1492-1650): Notas para su estudio” in Fenlon I and Knighton, T. (eds) Early Music Printing and Publishing in the Iberian World (Kassel, Rechenberger, 2006) pp. 147-179

Gonzalbo Aizpuru, P. “Leer de la infancia a la vejez. El buen orden de las lecturas en la Colonia” in García, I. & Rueda Ramírez, P.  (comps) Leer en tiempos de colonia (México, UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010) pp. 21-54;

González Sánchez, C. A. Homo Viator, homo scribens. Cultura gráfica, información y gobierno en la expansión atlántica (siglos xv-xvii) (Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2007)

Greer Johnson, J. The Book in the Americas (Providence, John Carter Brown, 1988)

Griffin, C. The Crombergers of Seville. The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

Griffin, C. “La imprenta en México y sus oficiales” in García, I. & Rueda Ramírez, P.  (comps) Leer en tiempos de colonia  (México, UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010) pp. 3-19.

Haebler, K. Early Printers of Spain and Portugal (London, Bibliographic Society, 1897)

Hazañas y la Rúa, J. La imprenta en Sevilla (Sevilla: Diputación Provincial de Sevilla, Junta de Patronato del Archivo, 1945-1949)

Leonard, I. A. Books of the Brave (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992)

Leonard, I, A. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Indies (Berkeley, University of California Press, Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 16, n. 3, 1933), pp. 217-372

Marín López, J. “Libros de música para el Nuevo Mundo a finales del siglo XVIII: el proyecto editorial del impresor José Doblado" in Navarro Antolín, F. (ed.) Orbis Incongnitvs. Avisos y Legajos del Nuevo Mundo. Homenaje al Profesor Luis Navarro García, 2 vols. (Huelva: Universidad de Huelva y Asociación Española de Americanistas, 2007-8), vol. 2, pp. 137-152.

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Rueda Ramírez, P. “La circulación de libros entre el viejo y el nuevo mundo en la Sevilla del siglo XVI y comienzos del siglo XVII” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, n. 22, 1999, pp. 79-105

Schäfer, E. El Consejo Real y Supremo de Indias vol. 1 (Junta de Castilla y León, Marcial Pons, 2003)

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