Pierre Attaingnant

Pierre Attaingnant was a prominent French music printer and publisher active in Paris who was one of the earliest to use single-impression printing. He is considered to be first large-scale publisher of single-impression movable type for music-printing.

Attaingnant began using a newly invented movable music type, in which a fragment of a musical staff was combined with a note on each piece of type. His single-impression method halved the time and labor formerly needed to print music, and was quickly adopted throughout Europe. With the usage of new printing method, Attaingnant was the first to achieve mass production in music publishing. There are 111 of his surviving publications which represent more than 150 outstanding composers of his day and include chansons, dance collections, masses, motets, psalms, and Passions. In 1537 he became imprimeur et libraire du Roy en musique, a Royal music printer and bookseller, to the French king Francis I (r. 1515 – 1547).