The impact of Morley's publications

With his madrigal collections, his instrumental music, his ayres and his A Plaine and Easie Introduction Morley established a pattern for music printing for the next twenty years. Nearly 170 editions and reissues of music (excluding simple psalm settings) and music tutors suitable for domestic use appeared in print in the period from 1588 to 1639, with a marked acceleration from the mid-1590s, when Morley produced his madrigal publications and Byrd's monopoly came to an end. By 1620, production was tailing off significantly, with an average of less than one publication of music a year from 1621 to 1639, when it ceased altogether until John Playford started publishing in the 1650s.

This chapter examines the direction taken by music publishing after Morley and is based on an analysis of the music printed in England the period 1588 to 1620. All surviving printed music publications are included, except for volumes of straightforward psalm settings published under the control of the Days' patent. Those psalm settings published by East, Morley and Barley in the 1590s outside the psalter patent are included, but further prints of East's Whole Booke of Psalmes after 1603 are not, as its position was then regularised within the psalter patent, with control passing to the Stationers' Company. ‘Ghost’ publications that do not survive but to which there are contemporary references, such as the Italian version of Morley's Canzonets to Two Voyces, have been excluded, because the bulk of the analysis relies on inspection of physical copies of the publications.