TANS’UR, William.
The Royal Psalmodist compleat: or, the universal-Harmony …
[St Neots?,] Printed by the Author, 1750.
Oblong 8vo, ff. [108], printed on one side only, engraved throughout, comprising a title-page, an explanatory leaf ‘The Gamut’ and engraved music; one leaf (Psalm 145) smaller and loose; apparently lacking one leaf of Psalm 18 and the final leaf of the anthem on psalm 1745 (see below); four-verse manuscript hymn to blank verso of Psalm 136 (with the signature Robt Bones); original lower endpaper of printer’s waste; some spots and stains, but generally good, in full modern calf; laid in loose is a letter from the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin presenting the book to the pianist Marion Stein on the occasion of her marriage to George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, in 1949.
Unrecorded edition of Tans’ur’s Royal Psalmodist (first 1742), comprising seventy-three psalm tunes, a ‘Jubilate Deo’, a ‘Doxology’, ‘A New Magnificat’, and eleven anthems. It is based on the same selection (and plates) as he had issued in an edition of 1748 (BL only in ESTC), ‘Engraved and printed, by and for the author … and sold by the author; and in London, by J. Robinson’. But there are some changes here: Psalms 32, 41, and 126 are removed, Psalms 23 and 145 are added, Psalms 47 and 138 are in new settings, and there are four new anthems (on Psalms 47, 103, 105, and 136).
The first edition of the Royal Psalmodist had included 150 psalm tunes, four anthems, and one Magnificat, all engraved in quarto by Tans’ur himself. By the following year he had cut the plates in half horizontally for an oblong format as here. But he continued to make changes, and by 1748 almost of all of the tunes were different from those used in 1742, and almost all were by Tans’ur – the earlier edition had incorporated existing tunes.
By this date Tans’ur seems to have settled in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, as stationer, bookseller, binder, and music teacher.
