The Primo Libro a due voci of Bernadino Lupacchino (Dal Vasto, as one of the title pages has it) and Joan Maria Tasso was one of the most often reprinted collections of the sixteenth century. At least nine editions from before 1600 have survived, and the title page of the earliest of these, which was published by Antonio Gardane of Venice in 1559, suggests that there might have been a previous edition. What is more, there were at least eleven reprints in the seventeenth century, and even one as late as 1701.
During the first fifty years of the period covered by the many reprints, no less than six different printers, including one of Milan, a city not especially noted for music publishing (the vast majority of north Italian editions appeared in Venice), thought it worthwhile to issue these duos. In 1565 an expanded edition of the collection appeared, with some vocal pieces, and six of the duos were included in the large anthology of two-part music published by Pierre Phalèse and Jean Bellère of Antwerp in 1590.
The original collection consists of thirty-nine pieces in all, thirteen by Lupacchino and fifteen by Tasso, and eleven very short numbers that were presumably put in just to fill up available space.
