Professor Christine Getz has received a 2016 Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society.

The Franklin program is designed in part to help meet the costs of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes. Getz will use the grant to travel to Italy for her current project, “Economic Partnerships, Marketing Strategies, and International Relations in the Music Prints of Filippo Lomazzo.”

By the early 17th century the music printing industry had begun to languish across the Italian peninsula. Yet between 1602 and 1630 the firm of Filippo Lomazzo in Milan issued at least 90 volumes of part music. A survey of the Lomazzo prints indicates that his contacts included not only Milanese composers, performers, booksellers, collectors, and patrons, but also internationally recognized ones. It further suggests that the firm considered how practical use of the music contained was best married to trends in producing books in related disciplines.

Using archival sources and printed books, Getz’s project explores how Lomazzo cultivated relationships with North Italian merchants, connoisseurs, and musicians, forged international relations with composers, collectors, and patrons, and exploited emerging trends in the organization and production of devotional literature, encyclopedias, travel guides, and histories to build a highly successful music printing business in early modern Milan.