Artaria's music shop and Boccherini's music in Viennese musical life

The article charts the rise and fall in the dissemination of Boccherini's published music in Vienna before 1800 by examining two sets of documents that have previously attracted little scholarly attention. Artaria's sales catalogues shed light on the burgeoning international trade in printed music after 1779 and the extensive commercial contacts that allowed the firm to offer most of Boccherini's published output for sale during the 1780s. A set of the firm's inventory ledgers documents production of its own editions and allows us to measure the shelf-life of individual Artaria editions from 1784 to 1793. The evidence from these sources reflects a widespread demand for Boccherini's music until the late 1780s and a marked decline thereafter, a trend that led Artaria to withdraw the plates of all its Boccherini publications by 1793.