Jane A. Bernstein is Austin Fletcher Professor of Music Emerita at Tufts University. Her books include Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice, Women's Voices across Musical Worlds, the 30-volume series The Sixteenth-Century Chanson, and Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press (1539-1572), which won the 1999 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society. Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, Bernstein also served as President of the American Musicological Society from 2008 to 2010 and was elected an Honorary Member in 2014.
In her landmark book on Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice (Oxford, 2001), Bernstein tackled the large-scale commercial production of Venetian music printers. Here, she explores the irregular and niche output of Roman presses, which ranged from super-sized choirbooks printed on 'carta papale' to charming canzonette engraved with visual flair. Printing Music in Renaissance Rome is a must-have: richly documented, lavishly illustrated, and written with Bernstein's inimitable style and authority. * Kate van Orden, author of Materialities: Books, Readers, and the Chanson in Sixteenth-Century Europe * Printers and publishers provided the interface between composers, performers, and their publics in the complex musical marketplaces of sixteenth-century Italy. While Venice is well known in this regard, Rome is not, yet the Eternal City served not just its own communities but the broader Catholic world. Bernstein's remarkable study takes us deep into its printing houses to reveal how they came to influence musical production and consumption far and wide. * Tim Carter, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice * In Printing Music in Renaissance Rome, Bernstein offers her readers a panoramic view of the musicians, businessmen, and craftsmen who joined together to create a unique market for printed music. She tells new stories of the technical wizardry of those who crafted lasting works of art. She also retells familiar stories from a new perspective: the literal pages on which they are written. These make for heady reading. * Samuel J. Brannon, Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association 81:2 * Most importantly, in bringing together so many fields - music history, bibliography, and cultural history, to name only the most obvious - Bernstein offers a model for making more welcoming space for music within the history of the book. * Samuel J. Brannon, Notes * Bernstein tells a vivid story of the rich and varied array of books published in the Eternal City that not only placed Rome at the technological forefront of the printing world, but in fact reflected a greater diversity of musical expression than the volumes printed contemporaneously in Venice. * Mark Kroll, Early Music America * The author's deep knowledge of Renaissance printing, honed over a long and productive career, makes this a captivating and valuable read. Printing Music in Renaissance Rome will inspire scholars for generations to come. * Benjamin Ory, JAMS *