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

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

[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

[London], 1774 [but c. 1780?]

The Foundling Hospital was established by Thomas Coram in 1739 as Britain’s first charity for the care of orphaned or abandoned children. ‘The Hospital chapel, in use by 1749 and officially opened in 1753, soon became well known for its music as well as for its elegant architecture and adornments’...

£750

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

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An interesting commonplace of verses, songs, madrigals, epigrams, carols, and fables, many of which are apparently unpublished, compiled for the use of Albertine de Cassina (1749–1816), Comtesse de Wonsheim, who married Charles de Lichtervelde (1741–1803) in 1769.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

Rome, Mascardi, 1708.

‘Fourth’ edition of a small practical manual of plain-chant, with examples, first published in 1651. Fabrizi, a Florentine about whom little is known, was maestro di capella at Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome. The treatise was referred to by Bononcini in his Musico pratico; a ‘third...

£500

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

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A very grand unpublished Requiem mass in memory of Franz Joseph Haydn, by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750–1819).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

[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

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

[Venice, Marescalchi e Canobbio, 1774?]

First edition, very rare, of a complete set of quartet part-books published in Venice by the composer–publishers Marescalchi and Canobbio.

£1750

London, Colombus Books, 1986.

Limited edition, copy no. 9 (of an unspecified number), in a special binding, inscribed ‘To Mom & Dad with all our love Roger x’.

£250

[London,] 1793.

First edition, scarce, of the libretto to The Prize by Prince Hoare, scored by Stephen Storace.

£350

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

Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, [1843]. 

First edition of Mendelssohn’s ‘Scottish’ Symphony.  It was first conceived when Mendelssohn visited Scotland during 1829, but the composer only began work in earnest ten years later. 

£1500

Mostly London, 1769–1775. 

An impressive collection of string trios and quartets, including compositions by Giordani, Boccherini, J. C. Bach, Abel, and the virtuoso Maddalena Sirmen, as well as the first publication in England of any work by Haydn (the quartets Op.1 and 2). 

£1250

London, J. Osborn and T. Longman, F. Fayram, and E. Symon, 1730.

First London edition of the first history of music in English by a British author; it is a reissue of the Edinburgh-printed first edition of 1721 with a cancel title-page and the dedication removed.

£1100

London, 1820s.

Two charming productions, sent as anonymous gifts, presumably to the wife or daughter(s) of Col. Thomas Nuttall (or Nuthall) (d. 1829) of the Madras Cavalry.

£850

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