Music
Contact Alex Day or Donovan Rees
We stock a range of antiquarian music, books on music, manuscripts and autographs, with an emphasis on early printed editions and manuscript scores of important composers.
Recent catalogues have included one of a very few surviving lifetime manuscripts of Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas; a remarkable collection of vocal and instrumental music from the library of the duchesse de Berry; and inscribed first editions of works by Berg, Janacek, Poulenc, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schumann, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams.-
[MILAN, province of.]
Ordo admittendi virgines ad monasterii ingressum habitumque regularem suscipiendi ritus item servandus...
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
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MOORE, George.
Manuscript commonplace book of poems, songs, prayers, and letters.
1805-1855.
An appealing commonplace book of verses and songs, with occasional prayers and letters, mostly written by George Moore (1794–1854), a London soda water manufacturer and amateur poet who was murdered by the notorious French revolutionary Emmanuel Barthélemy (1823–1855).
£550
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[PROCESSIONAL, Dominican use.]
Processionarium ordinis fratrum praedicatorum.
Seville, Meinardus Ungut and Stanislaus Polonus, 3 April, 1494.
First edition of the first Spanish book to make extensive use of typeset music printing, one of the finest products of early Spanish typography.
£35000
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RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio.
Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...
Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562.
Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature.
£2800
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[ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques.]
Le Devin du village, intermede, représenté devant Sa Majesté a Fontainebleau, le Mecredi 14 Novembre...
[Paris,] Pierre-Robert-Christophe Ballard, 1770.
Rare edition of a later lifetime performance of Rousseau’s influential opera, The Village Soothsayer, in an attractively unsophisticated sammelband of court operas.
£375
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SACCHI, Giovenale.
Del numero e delle misure delle corde musiche e loro corrispondenze. Dissertazione del P. D. Giovenale Sacchi...
Milan, [Giuseppe Mazzucchelli (colophon)], 1761.
First edition of Sacchi’s first work: a theoretical study of music and acoustic from a mathematical and physical perspective built upon the most innovative eighteenth-century physics. Galilei, Kapler, Newton, Mersenne, and contemporary works on the nature of air form the basis of Sacchi’s study of...
£2250
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SCHUBERT, Franz, composer.
A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing 18 Lieder including his most famous early songs ‘Erlkönig’...
Vienna, 1821-1833
A rare collection of Schubert Lieder in a contemporary binding, apparently as retailed by the Czech music publisher Berra, including three first editions.
£7500
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SPRÜNGLI, Johann Jacob, editor.
Männergesänge von Freunden der Tonkunst gesammelt, dem Liederkranze zu Franfurt a. M. in Liebe...
Zürich, gedruckt bei J. J. Ulrich, im Verlage des Herausgebers, 1840.
First edition, the partbook issue. The work was also issued in score. Both are very rare, OCLC locating a copy of the 1st Bass part at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a set at the Swiss National Library. There are apparently no copies in Germany: KVK shows the British Library copy (in score)...
£950
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VERHEYEN, Pierre Emmanuel.
Requiem mass in C minor.
[Flanders, c. 1810.]
A very grand unpublished Requiem mass by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750–1819).
£8000
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[VOGEL, Johann Christoph.]
Démophon.
[France (probably Paris), c. 1787].
A contemporary scribal manuscript of Johann Christoph Vogel’s opera Démophon, from the library of Christoph Willibald Gluck.
£5250
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WAPPEROM, Jacobus Joannes.
Gezangen door J.J. Wapperom.
The Hague, 1805.
Very rare collection of songs by the Dutch notary and poet Wapperom (1763–1822), one of only a small number of copies produced, decorated by the author himself and distributed among his friends and family.
£675
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WILSON, David (editor).
A Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, &c. in three Parts …
[Edinburgh:] Sold by the Editor at his House … and by J. Hamilton, Music Seller … [c.1800?].
Second(?), expanded edition of this collection of (mostly) hymn tunes scored for treble, tenor, and bass. Though for most hymns the tunes only are printed, there are words for Cowper’s ‘Hark, my Soul!’ and one other, and at the end are the words and tunes for seven secular catches (in three...
£500