Livre de melanges de C. le Jeune. Contratenor.
A contratenor partbook from Claude le Jeune's Livre de melanges, printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin in 1585 for singers of sixteenth-century French chansons. The pages are typeset polyphonic music in black notation on cream paper, with decorated historiated initials opening each piece and small running heads naming the part. A designer could take the clean five-line staff layout, the ornate woodcut initials with foliage and figures, and the restrained letterpress hierarchy of title, page number and text.
