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

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

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

[France (probably Paris), c. 1787].

A contemporary scribal manuscript of Johann Christoph Vogel’s opera Démophon, from the library of Christoph Willibald Gluck.

£5250

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

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A very grand unpublished Requiem mass in memory of Franz Joseph Haydn, by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750–1819).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

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

Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.

An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

£4250

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

Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Ballard, 1723. [bound with:] [—.] La feste de Diane, nouvelle entrée, ajoutée aux festes grecques et romaines,...

First edition of the first ‘Ballet-héroïque’, together with the first edition of a fourth ‘entrée’, La feste de Diane, which was added to it for a 1734 revival, both signed by the composer and the publisher with a manuscript correction by the latter.

£3500

Paris, Bass, c. 1830.

The complete Piquet deck of these rare and unusual musical playing cards including the English rules for the game, a delightful example of a nineteenth-century parlour game produced for the Anglo-French market.

£3000

[Hanover?, 1796.]

The seventh son of George III and Queen Charlotte, Prince Adolphus (1774–1850), was born in London, but in 1786 was sent alongside his two brothers Ernest and Augustus to be educated in Göttingen, then followed a military career, with successive positions in both the Hanoverian and the British armies....

£2850

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

Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566.

First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.

£2750

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

[France (Nantes?), c. 1795.]

A fascinating manuscript collection of French songs, both operatic and popular, compiled in the years after the Thermidorean Reaction and the execution of Robespierre.

£2400

Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559. 

Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric.  The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172). 

£2250

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

London, Printed by W. Godbid for J. Playford, at his Shop … 1671.

First edition of the first harmonised Psalter after the Restoration, a landmark work in the re-introduction of part-singing into churches.

£1850

Italy, mid-eighteenth century.

A collection of secular madrigals for two voices by the composer Clari (1677–1754), written for soprano/bass, soprano/alto, and soprano/tenor, each with instrumental bass accompaniment.

£1800