On August 14, 1457 Johann FustOffsite Link and Peter SchöfferOffsite Link, a scribe who adopted the new technology of printing, published the Psalterium platinum Offsite Link (Mainzer Psalter) at Mainz. The work is cited in the Incunabula as Psalterium. With canticles, hymns, capitula, preces maiores and minores. All known copies are printed on vellum.This magnificent book was:• The first printed book to include a colophon giving both the name of the printer and the date of printing.• The first work to incorporate color printing, with initial letters printed in red, light purple, and blue (from an engraved compound metal plate).• The first printed book to include music; Schoeffer left blank space on several pages for users to draw in the staves and notes. As a result, some copies have 4-line staves, some have 5-line staves, some have gothic music notation, and some have roman notation. Some copies retain the blank spaces. The colophon of the Mainz Psalter boasted of the new technology involved in its production.The colophon reads in translation: “The present copy of the Psalms, adorned with beauty of capital letters, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any driving of the pen. . . .”
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