French family of type founders. Nicolas Gando (b Geneva, early 18th century; d Paris, 1767), having first established himself in Geneva, moved in 1736 to Paris, where he took over the foundry of his uncle Jean Louis Gando. Nicolas issued a specimen of his types in 1745, and another in 1758 to show the resources of Claude Lamesle’s foundry, which he bought that year. His son Pierre François (b Geneva, 1733; d Paris, 1800) was a partner in the foundry and succeeded him.
The Gandos owe their place in history less to the qualities of their type than to their polemical exchanges with Pierre-Simon Fournier on the question of typographical music printing. In his Traité historique, which is both a general account of developments in music printing and a bitter attack on the exclusive privilege enjoyed by the Ballard family, Fournier accused the Gandos, in terms very damaging to their reputation, of passing off as their own in 1764, music characters which he had published in 1756. The Gandos replied in support of Ballard and the printing establishment, highlighting errors in Fournier’s historical account and accusing him of plagiarizing the methods devised for typographical music printing by Breitkopf (1754–5). They also described their own system. They cast clefs, bar-lines, minims, crotchets, detached quavers (and sub-divisions of the quaver) in one piece as complete characters, without fragments of staff attached. Beams to join the stems of tied quavers and the like were also cast as single pieces in various lengths so that the only junction required was between the stem of the note (a crotchet with its stem reduced if necessary) and the small connecting strokes cast on the beam at standard intervals. The staves were made up of continuous pieces of metal.
It was necessary to pass the sheet through the press twice for a complete impression: once to print the notes, clefs, key signatures, rests, bar-lines etc., and once to print the staves, words and other ancillary material. Under normal printing conditions it was difficult to align the notes and staves exactly, because of the fine adjustments that had to be made in the relative position of type material in the two separate formes. After damping, inking and being passed through the press to take an impression of the first forme there was a danger that the paper might lose its integrity while it was waiting to be put through the press with the second forme. The Gandos claimed the invention of a press which avoided this: the two formes were worked in rapid succession and the paper was not moved from its original printing position between impressions. These two factors ensured that the size of the sheet did not vary.
In their Observations the Gandos offered a four-page setting of Psalm cl by the Abbé Roussier as a specimen of their types printed on their special press. Of much greater interest, they also showed specimens of six early music types from the stock-in-trade of the Ballard concern (see illustration).
P.-S. Fournier: Essai d’un nouveau caractère de fonte pour l’impression de la musique (Paris, 1756/R)
P.-S. Fournier: Traité historique et critique sur l’origine et les progrès des caractères de fonte pour l’impression de la musique, avec des épreuves de nouveaux caractères de musique (Berne, 1765/R, 1972 with the following two items)
N. and F. Gando: Observations sur le Traité historique et critique de Monsieur Fournier le jeune sur l’origine et les progrès des caractères de fonte pour l’impression de la musique (Paris, 1766/R, 1972 with the preceding and following items)
P.-S. Fournier: ‘Réponse à un mémoire publié en 1766 par MM. Gando, au sujet des caractères de fonte pour la musique’, Manuel typographique, ii (Paris, 1768), 289–306; repr. with the two preceeding items (Geneva, 1972)
M. Audin: Les livrets typographiques des fonderies françaises créées avant 1800 (Paris, 1933, 2/1964)
H. EDMUND POOLE