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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.
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  1. [POETRY.]

    ‘Récueil de differentes pieces de vers, et chansons. A l’usage de Madame la Comtesse de Lichtervelde née Comtesse...

    [Belgium, 1777 and later].

    An interesting commonplace of verses, songs, madrigals, epigrams, carols, and fables, many of which are apparently unpublished, compiled for the use of Albertine de Cassina (1749–1816), Comtesse de Wonsheim, who married Charles de Lichtervelde (1741–1803) in 1769.

    £750

  2. [PRELLEUR, Peter.]

    The Compleat Tutor for the Harpsichord or Spinnet wherein is shewn the Italian Manner of Fingering with suits...

    London, Peter Thompson, musical instrument maker [1755?]

    First edition thus?, an abridgment of part 6 of Prelleur’s Modern Musick-Master (1731) but with different musical examples. The examples, printed on pp. 5–32, include popular tunes and dances alongside pieces adapted from Handel and Corelli.

    £1250

  3. RAMEAU, Jean-Philippe.

    Zoroastre, tragedie, mise en musique par M. Rameau, représentée pour la premiere fois par l’Académie...

    Paris, Boivin, Leclair, Castagneri and the author, [c. 1750].

    First edition; rare. Despite a strong cast and a lavish production, Zoroastre met with only limited success (and, it seems, much bewilderment) when first performed at the Opéra in 1749. By May 1752 Rameau and the librettist Louis de Cahusac had begun an extensive reworking of the opera....

    £5000

  4. RECUEIL DE QUADRILLES

    pour le Piano.

    [France, 1840s?]

    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...

    £850

  5. 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

  6. RINUCCINI, Ottavio.

    La Dafne, nuovamente stampata in occasione delle felicissime nozze del signor marchese Pier Francesco Rinuccini,...

    Florence, Borgognissanti, 1810.

    Scarce edition of Rinuccini’s Dafne, the first printed opera libretto; a rare survival preserved unbound in folded sheets.

    £650

  7. [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

  8. [ROUSSEAU, Pierre.] 

    Considérations sur le théatre de l’opéra.  Novembre 1822. 

    [Paris,] de l’imprimerie de Rignoux, [1822].

    Very rare proposal for a new opera house in Paris by the architect Pierre Rousseau (1751–1829), annotated by the author and accompanied by an autograph letter. 

    £475

  9. SACCHI, Giovenale. 

    Del numero e delle misure delle corde musiche e loro corrispondenze.  Dissertazione del P. D. Giovenale...

    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. 

    £850

  10. [SCHOLZE, Johann Sigismund.]

    Sperontes singende Muse an der Pleisse in 2 mahl 50 Oden, der neuesten und besten musicalische Stücke...

    Leipzig, auf kosten der lüstigen Gesellschaft [Breitkopf], 1741.

    Second edition of the first part, first edition of the second part – a hugely influential collection of German songs that laid the groundwork for the Romantic Lied. ‘Its engraved titles, imprinted notes and numerous charming woodcut vignettes make this one of the age’s most delightful...

    £4500

  11. SCHUBERT, Franz, composer. 

    A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing eighteen Lieder including his most famous...

    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

  12. 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...

    £950

  13. TANS’UR, William.

    The Royal Psalmodist compleat: or, the universal-Harmony …

    [St Neots?,] Printed by the Author, 1750.

    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),...

    £850

  14. TANS’UR, William.

    The Royal Psalmodist compleat: or, the universal Harmony. Containing all the very best Tunes both old and new,...

    Rugby: Engraved, and printed by the Author, and published according to Act of Parliament: A. D. 1742. And sold by most Book[s]ellers in Town...

    First edition, extremely rare, a collection of 150 psalm tunes (with settings in four parts) and one anthem, by the psalmodist and composer William Tans’ur (1700-1783).

    £4250

  15. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Zhivoi trup. Drama v 6 deistviiakh i 12 kartinakh [A Living Corpse. A drama in 6 acts and 12 scenes].

    Moscow, A. Ia. Petrov, [1911].

    One of the earliest printings of Tolstoy’s Living Corpse, one of a number of editions in 1911, the year it was first staged, posthumously, at the Moscow Arts Theatre, offered with a traditional gypsy folk song included in the performance of Act II of The Living Corpse, first edition...

    £2750

  16. VERHEYEN, Pierre Emmanuel.

    Requiem mass in C minor.

    [Flanders, c. 1810.]

    A very grand unpublished Requiem mass in memory of Franz Joseph Haydn, by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750–1819).

    £4750

  17. [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

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. ZARLINO, Gioseffo.

    Le Istitutioni harmoniche … nelle quali; oltra le materie appartenenti alla musica; si trovano dichiarati...

    Venice, [Pietro da Fino], 1558.

    First edition, rare, of ‘arguably the most important and influential book in the history of music theory … [It] opened the way for the new tonality which has governed music from the seventeenth century to the present day’ (PMM).

    £15000