RECUEIL DE QUADRILLES
pour le Piano.
[France, 1840s?]
Large 4to calligraphic manuscript, ff. [55], comprising a decorative title-page and dedication leaf in watercolour in red, blue, green, and yellow, and 16 manuscript quadrilles (each in five parts, titled in blue and red), and one waltz, with 15 decorative title-pages, 1 lithograph, two pencil drawings, and a decorative finis leaf in blue; in very good condition, with original tissue-guards, in contemporary red roan and red-orange boards, edges worn.
A delightful album, evidently produced as a gift, collecting 17 popular dances arranged for the piano, each with a different decorative title-page. Composers whose work is featured include Philippe Musard (1792–1859), one of the most famous musicians in Europe in the 1830s and ’40s, ‘the doyen of dance composers and popular conductors until 1852’ (Grove online); the piano teachers Adolphe-Claire Le Carpentier (1809–1869) and Gervasius Redler; and the composer and music publisher ‘Camille Schubert’ (i.e. Charles Edouard Prilipp, 1810–1899).
One of the most popular ballroom dances of the nineteenth century, with elaborate steps danced by sets of couples in a square formation, the quadrille was made of five parts: ‘Le pantalon’, ‘L’été’, ‘La poule’, ‘La pastourelle’, and ‘La finale’. Having stormed Paris in the early century, the quadrille reached London in 1815 and Berlin in 1821 and was the ultimate source of the American ‘square dance’.
The elaborate title-pages here include an extraordinary diversity of letter-forms alongside floral and botanical decoration, and in one a small Egyptian scene. The tail-piece shows a pair of butterflies on stage with a spider overhead – one proffers a flower on bended knee, the other raises a stiletto.
A full list of contents is available on request.
