 During the Middle Ages, if an Abbess wanted to have a copy of an existing composition, such as a composition owned by an Abbess in another town, she would have to hire a copyist to do the task by hand, which would be a lengthy process and one that could lead to transcription errors.Even after the advent of music printing in the mid-1400s, much music continued to exist solely in composers' hand-written manuscripts well into the 18th century.There were several difficulties in translating the new printing press technology to music.