Andrea Antico

Andrea Antico (also Andrea Antico da Montona, Anticho, Antiquo) (c. 1480 – after 1538) was a music printer, editor, publisher and composer of the Renaissance born in the Republic of Venice, of Istrian birth, active in Rome and in Venice. He was the first printer of sacred music in Rome, and the earliest competitor of Venetian Ottaviano Petrucci, who is regarded as the first significant music printer. Life Antico was born in Montona, Istria in the Republic of Venice (today Motovun in Croatia). His ethnicity is not known; fifteenth-century Montona had a mixed population of Italians and Croats. Little documentation has yet come to light regarding his early life, but he may have been active in the diocese of Parenzo (now Poreč) in Istria, based on a papal letter of 1516 which called him a “cleric of the diocese of Parenzo, now living in Rome”. His first publication dates from 1510, and was a collection of frottole. Like Petrucci, whose similar Odhecaton had appeared eight years earlier in Venice, he began by publishing popular secular music. In 1513 he secured papal privileges for printing music in the Papal States; this was the first such privilege to be granted, and shortly after the