ABOUT seventeen years after Fust and Schoeffer printed their first dated book, the Psalterium of 1457, Joannes Tinctoris, a Belgian scholar and musician, published the first printed book on music, the Terminorum musicae diffinitorium. This thin quarto volume of fifteen leaves, of which only three copies are known to exist, contained two hundred and ninetyone definitions of musical terms and was one of the first dictionaries of any kind to be printed. It is profoundly significant of the general interest in music, that a book on music should appear so early in the history of printed books. Equally significant is the fact that the first dated book on music, the Theoricum opus armonice discipline of Franchino Gaffurio, printed at Naples in 1480, had to be reprinted in 1492, and Gaffurio's Practica musicse, first issued in 1496, went through at least four editions. Probably the earliest example of printed notation occurs in Jean Charlier de Gerson's Collectorium super Magnificat printed by Conrad Fyner at Esslingen in 1473. This work contains a music illustration consisting of five printed notes, the staff lines being ruled in by hand. The Fust and Schoeffer Psalterium of 1457 contained printed staffs, but no notes, it being customary either to write them in by hand or to print them in by means of a handpunch. Ulrich Hahn printed a missal at Rome in 1476, in which the music was produced in two printings, the lines in red, and the notes in black ink. It was not until 1525 that Pierre Haultin, of Paris, contrived a font of metal type by which music could be printed in one impression. Petrus Sambonetus seems to have been the first to print music from engraved copper plates, his first publication by that method being the Canzone printed at Sienna in 1515. The literature of music begun thus auspiciously, continued to grow and expand through the following years. It evidently paid to advertise even at that early date, for in 1469 Johann Mentel of Strassburg issued a modest little book advertisement. His contemporaries took up the idea and in due course of time evolved the modern catalogue. A typical old music catalogue is the Omnes libri musici, qui hactenus Norimbergae in officina typographia Gerlachiana impressi sunt modo venales prostant, which