Adam Berg

Adam Berg, also known as Adamus Montanus or Adamo Montano (born perhaps around 1540; died in Munich around 1609–1610), was a printer and publisher whose workshop became a principal supplier of books, music, and official documents to the Bavarian court. His date and place of birth remain uncertain: Nuremberg has been suggested, but neither his origins nor his apprenticeship are securely established. His Munich career is documented from 1564. The traditional death date of 1610 also requires qualification, since the Bayerisches Musiker-Lexikon Online places his death before 29 December 1609. He must be distinguished from Johann vom Berg, the Nuremberg music printer with whom a family relationship has not been demonstrated.

Berg established himself in Munich by purchasing the declining printing business of Andreas Schobser in 1564, probably with the encouragement of Duke Albrecht V. He restored its equipment and commercial position using his own and his wife’s capital. As ducal court printer, supported by Albrecht and subsequently by Wilhelm V, he developed an enterprise combining government commissions with religious, literary, and musical publishing. Its Catholic orientation was apparent immediately in an edition of the Index of prohibited books in 1564. Later publications included works by Martin Eisengrein, Jodocus Lorichius, and Johannes Fickler, while the German saints’ lives derived from Laurentius Surius, issued from 1574, brought substantial hagiographical literature into vernacular circulation.

One of the workshop’s earliest and most consequential publications was Samuel Quicchelberg’s Inscriptiones vel tituli theatri amplissimi, printed in 1565. This quarto of sixty-four unnumbered pages presented a programme for assembling and ordering objects, images, natural specimens, and technical materials within an encyclopaedic collection. Written in the environment of Albrecht V’s Kunstkammer, it connected Berg’s press with the court’s organisation of knowledge as well as its religious policies. The work appeared only once during the sixteenth century; its later recognition as a foundational text of museum theory rests upon that Munich edition. Berg’s imprint, ex officina Adami Berg typographi, therefore occurs on a publication whose importance extends well beyond Bavarian institutional history.

Court festivities supplied another publishing opportunity. In 1568, Berg printed Massimo Troiano’s Discorsi delli triomfi, giostre, apparati, describing the marriage of the future Wilhelm V to Renata of Lorraine. Issued under the Italian form of his name, Adamo Montano, the book preserved information about ceremonies, entertainments, and the musical life surrounding the wedding. Its subsequent Venetian reworking as Troiano’s Dialoghi, published by Bolognino Zaltieri in 1569, belongs to a separate edition and publishing operation. The relationship between the two books illustrates how a report produced within the Munich court could be adapted for a wider Italian readership.

Berg’s association with Catholic publishing also accommodated medical and alchemical texts. In 1570, he printed the German Archidoxa, zwölff Bücher and the Latin Archidoxa ex Theophrastia, both associated with Paracelsus, edited by Johann Albrecht, known as Wimpinaeus, and dedicated to Albrecht V. These publications place the workshop within the early posthumous transmission of Paracelsian writings. They also show how editorial initiative, the authority of a deceased author, and ducal patronage could converge in books whose subject matter differed markedly from the press’s devotional and administrative production.

Berg’s most ambitious sustained undertaking was the Patrocinium musices, a sequence of twelve choirbook publications issued between 1573 and 1598. The initial group comprised Orlando di Lasso’s motets in 1573, five-voice masses and festal Officia in two publications of 1574, the Passio with associated lessons in 1575, and Magnificat settings in 1576. These were distinct publications within a continuing programme, rather than instalments of a complete edition planned and issued simultaneously. Their succession brought several major categories of Lasso’s sacred music into an imposing and recognisable printed form.

The series subsequently expanded through Ludwig Daser’s Passionis Domini nostri Iesu Christi historia in 1578, further Magnificat settings by Lasso in 1587, and Lasso’s five-voice masses in 1589. Other contributors were Franz Sales, whose festal Officia appeared in 1589, Blasius Amon, represented by masses in 1591, and Cesare de Zachariis, whose intonations, psalm formulas, and hymns followed in 1594. A further publication by Sales closed the sequence in 1598. Its changing authorship and long intervals of production make the Patrocinium a record of successive publishing decisions across a quarter-century.

The material achievement lay in adapting choirbook layout to an extensive typographical programme. The folio pages arranged the vocal parts across an opening, requiring specially manufactured music types and careful coordination of notation, text, spacing, and ornamental initials. Seven publications contained music by Lasso and consisted predominantly of first editions, although the 1575 volume incorporated his earlier Job lessons, already printed by Gardano in 1565. The series consequently combined new repertory with selected republication. Its large format and elaborate woodcut decoration gave printed music a ceremonial presence while retaining its function as performance material.

Berg also supplied music for smaller ensembles and instruction. Lasso’s 1577 Novae aliquot et ante hac non ita usitatae ad duas voces cantiones suavissimae contained twenty-four bicinia, including twelve texted duets and twelve untexted pieces suitable for instrumental performance. The title explicitly addressed learners as well as experienced musicians. Subsequent editions and adaptations elsewhere demonstrate the repertory’s portability across different markets and performing circumstances. Such publications broadened the workshop’s musical clientele beyond institutions able to purchase and use the monumental choirbooks.

The 1584 edition of Lasso’s Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales represents a particularly revealing transition from restricted court possession to printed dissemination. The music had previously formed part of Albrecht V’s celebrated manuscript commission, illuminated by Hans Mielich and interpreted in accompanying commentaries by Quicchelberg. Berg’s edition made the compositions available in printed partbooks after the duke’s death. The distinction between these objects matters: Mielich’s densely illustrated manuscript and Berg’s typographical edition transmitted the same musical cycle through different material forms, with different possibilities of ownership and use.

In heraldic publishing, Berg assumed an editorial role beyond manufacturing books. He printed Martin Schrot’s Wappenbuch in 1576 and, after Schrot’s death, enlarged the project for the 1580–1581 edition of the Wappenbuch des Heiligen Römischen Reichs und allgemainer Christenheit in Europa. Its ordering of secular and ecclesiastical arms offered a visual account of political and religious hierarchy. Berg’s additions included a striking double-page anti-Ottoman allegory presenting Hungary’s suffering and German intervention. The expanded edition thus joined reference material to contemporary political argument, making the printer-publisher an active participant in the work’s interpretation of Christian Europe.

His administrative printing likewise ranged beyond short proclamations. The 1578 Der Fürstlichen Bayrischen Landßordnung weittere erclerung supplemented Bavarian territorial legislation with provisions concerning public order. The surviving Bavarian State Library copy comprises [2], XXXV, [3] leaves, with a title-page woodcut and printing in red and black. Here, the workshop’s resources served the presentation and circulation of ducal law: typography, heraldic imagery, and colour helped give an official legal text its recognisable material authority.

During his later career, collaboration with Aegidius Albertinus connected Berg to international Catholic literature and missionary reporting. A notable example is Diego de Pantoja’s Histori und eigentliche Beschreibung of the Jesuit mission in China, published in 1608. Albertinus prepared the German version from an Italian intermediary; Spanish editions had appeared in 1604–1605, followed by French and Italian versions in 1607. Berg’s publication therefore occupied a precise position within a multilingual sequence of translations, carrying information about China and Jesuit activity into the German-reading market.

The workshop’s continuation depended substantially upon Anna Berg, who managed it after her husband’s death until 1629. Under her direction it produced Matthäus Rader’s illustrated Bavaria sancta and Bavaria pia publications of 1615–1628, with engravings by Raphael Sadeler. Their son, Adam Berg the Younger, subsequently continued the business and died in 1634. Meanwhile, the elder Berg’s son-in-law Nikolaus Heinrich had established a competing Munich concern: Lasso’s sons entrusted him with major posthumous publications, including the Magnum opus musicum of 1604. The family’s publishing history thus involved both the survival of Berg’s workshop under his widow and the emergence of an independent enterprise within his immediate professional circle.