London: John Watts, 1729.

Third (and only quarto) edition of The Beggar’s Opera, printed in this format to match the first edition of the sequel Polly. Though Gay’s lasting fame rests on The Beggar’s Opera, in his own time it was sustained by his much reprinted Fables, here found in the first...

£750

London, Novello & Company, 1911.

A handsome copy of the Coronation service, with choral settings of the music sung, including (among others) Parry’s ‘I was glad’, Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, and ‘God save the King!’, arranged by Sir Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), organist at Westminster Abbey.

£450

London, Novello & Company, 1937.

A handsome copy of the Coronation service, with choral settings of the music sung, including work by Purcell, Handell, Byrd, and Vaughan Williams.

£275

Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1809–11]. 

Very rare first complete edition of Reichardt’s musical settings of Goethe’s poetry, comprising 128 settings of which thirty-nine appear here for the first time. 

£6500

A specially bound volume containing ten of Gounod’s London-published songs, all signed and inscribed in pencil on the upper wrapper to the English actor Arthur Cecil Blunt (stage name Arthur Cecil, 1843–1896): ‘To my friend Arthur C. Blunt. Ch, Gounod’. The songs, of which eight are in English,...

£2000

[Italy and Germany, c. 1815.]

An attractive compilation of solo piano music and popular songs, gathered partly in Italy circa 1815–16 (no doubt during a Grand Tour) and bound up in England shortly afterwards.

£2500

… London: Printed for J. Wilcox … 1740.

First edition, based largely on the Dictionnaire de Musique of Sébastien de Brossard and the musical articles in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, with some original material. One of two variant issues, this has ‘A’ on the title-page above the ‘i’ in ‘Dictionary’.

£650

London. J. Walsh, 1743.

First edition. Greene was organist and composer to the Chapels Royal, and an admirer and sometime friend of Handel (their friendship expiring on the occasion of Handel’s quarrel with Buononcini). Forty Select Anthems, setting Psalms and other Biblical texts, is ‘the work on which his reputation...

£850

Naples, dalla tipografia del Giornale Enciclopedico, 1820.

First edition in book form, reprinted from the Giornale Enciclopedico di Napoli, with some additional material in an appendix to the second volume. The first volume is on the music and musicians of Naples, the second volume deals with Neapolitan painters up to the eighteenth century.

£150

Paris, 15 May 1846.

Fromental Halévy (1799–1862) showed musical promise at an early age and entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1810, becoming a pupil of Cherubini for composition the following year. In 1827 he became professor of harmony and accompaniment there, in 1833 of counterpoint and fugue, and in 1840 of composition....

£750

[London] Sold by J: Walsh … & P. Randall … and I. Hare. [1709].

First editions of three works from the first years of the Italian Opera at the Queen’s Theatre in Haymarket, including the first two fully Italian operas on the London stage. The theatre had opened in 1705 with a very rocky first season, and was turned over to the performance of opera alone...

£2750

London, Printed for the Editor. Sold by H. D. Symonds … 1794 [–1800].

Very rare enlarged edition, adding an ‘Appendix’ (pp. 85–114), with the words to 45 new songs; the final page of the index is a cancel, adding the new contents. ESTC records only the original printing of 1794 (paginated [4], 85, [7]). An inscription here dates the Appendix, printed by Smeeton,...

£500

[Leipzig, Mainzer Presse for Insel-Verlag, 1928.]

First edition of Hofmannsthal’s text for Richard Strauss’s opera – Hofmannsthal himself considered it to be his finest libretto. The opera was first performed on 6 June 1928 in Dresden, five weeks before Hofmannsthal’s death. The plot is a free adaptation of Euripides’ Helena, which introduces...

£750

London, Printed for Longman and Broderip … [1780?].

Two rare later editions of the Magdalen Chapel hymnbook.

£2000

London, Printed for C. and S. Thompson … [1770?]

First edition thus, very rare, of this Magdalen Chapel Hymnbook, with a total of thirty-eight tunes: twenty-four hymns, three anthems, nine psalms, ‘The Wish’ and ‘The Ode’.

£1750

Padua, ‘dalla Tipografia e Fonderia della Minerva’, 1821.

First edition of Majer’s treatise on Italian music, ‘a conservative defence of tradition as part of a backlash against the popularity of Rossini’s reforms’ (Baragwanath, p. 29).

£450

London, J. Osborn and T. Longman, F. Fayram, and E. Symon, 1730.

First London edition of the first history of music in English by a British author; it is a reissue of the Edinburgh-printed first edition of 1721 with a cancel title-page and the dedication removed.

£1100

Paris, René Guignard, 1681.

First edition. A Jesuit professor at Lyons and later Paris, Menestrier developed ‘a special interest in the history and organization of public festivals and ceremonies’. He devised ballets for the visit of Louis XIV to Lyons in 1658 and published a series of works on the subject. ‘The four...

£600

Milan, Tamburini and Valdoni, 1843.

Scarce edition of this set of rites for the admission of women to convents in the province of Milan, covering their investiture, tonsure, and vows, with instructions printed in red, texts to be spoken and sung in black, and with printed music for hymns and blessings. The first edition appears...

£200

Paris, Editions de la Sirène, 1920.

First edition of Milhaud’s Le boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58 (The ox on the roof, or The nothing-doing bar), a surrealist ballet-farce which became extremely popular in 1920s Paris.

£2400